Johanniterkommende Boekzetel

The Johanniterkommende Boekzetel stands in the flatlands of Lower Saxony, just west of what was once the Boekzeteler Meer. Three farmsteads named Boekzeteler Kloster still mark the old estate, and in their midst a warft holds a quiet cemetery. Beneath the graves and the surrounding fields lie the faint outlines of medieval walls that once carried the weight of a church. Little is recorded about this small Johanniter commandery. Benedictine monks may have begun the site before handing it to the Knights of St John, who are first mentioned here in 1319. By 1475 the place appears in a parish register, and in 1528 it passed to Count Enno II. after the dissolution of the Hasselter Kommende. The church was pulled down in 1555, its stones reused nearby. Archaeologists probing the soil in 2011 traced a rectangular footprint roughly twenty-five metres long and eight to ten wide, suggesting the nave measured seven or eight metres across. Visitors walk past the three working farmsteads that still encircle the warft. On top of the mound a small cemetery keeps the memory of the vanished monastery. Where the church once stood, a low rise in the turf shows the line of its walls. South of the burial ground, geophysical surveys have detected a rectangular structure at least thirty-six metres long, possibly the remains of a larger building. The fields around the farmyards stretch flat and green, giving no hint of the centuries-old foundations hidden below.