Temple.-- sta. on Metropolitan District Ry., London, between Charing Cross and Blackfriars. The Temple is an extensive series of buildings on S. side of Fleet Street, belonging to the members of the two Inns of Court, and known as the Inner Temple and Middle Temple; it takes its name from the Knights Templars, who held it 1184-1313, and whose tombs are in the Temple Church (1185), built on the model of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and one of the four round churches in England. Temple Bar, between Fleet Street and the Strand, divided the city of London from Westminster; it was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670, and taken down on the erection of the new Law Courts, commenced in 1874.

(John Bartholomew, Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887))