Despite the ceaseless hum of activity brought about by a death in suspicious circumstances, the vast chapel at the heart of Templeton Towers remained the haven of peace that it had always been. Donald May was impressed and appalled at the same time by the opulence of Sir Templeton Taylor’s monument to his own thrift on the one hand and his supposed Knight Templar ancestry on the other. The ornate Anglo-Catholic glass and wood and marble and stone were worthy of the greatest cathedral. May looked up at the ceiling – a miniature Notre Dame, Paris. The electric lighting was original – one of the first ever installations in Britain, dating from the building’s construction in the early 1880s. Could God be worshipped in a place like this? Was He even meant to be lauded here? Or was it Sir Templeton Ta...

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