Its name comes from its Templar ownership and its position in the middle of the Lincoln Heath, bruyère (heather) from the French language current at the time.

The site has been excavated twice, firstly by the Rev Dr. G. Oliver, the rector of Scopwick in 1832–3, and in 1908 by Sir William St John Hope.

10¾d., including the bailiwick of South Witham and the farm of half the rectory and the grange of Holme in Heckington, with perquisites of a court.

In one of them a niche or cell was discovered which had been carefully walled up; and within it the skeleton of a man, who appears to have died in a sitting posture, for his head and arms were found hanging between his legs, and the back bowed forward.

Immuring was not an uncommon punishment in these places; and an instance of it was discovered a century ago, in one of the walls at Thornton Abbey, in this county.

His body seems to have been thrown down, as if from a trap door; for he lay doubled up; and in the fore part of his skull were two holes which had evidently been produced by violence.

The wall stones had assumed the colour of brick, and great quantities of cinders were mixed with human sculls and bones, all of which had been submitted to the operation of fire, and some of them were perfectly calcined.

Underneath the cloisters, between the church and the tower, many human bones were discovered which appear to have been thrown together in the utmost confusion, and lying at different depths; some being very near the surface.

Amongst these were the skeleton of a very young child; and the skull of an adult, with a round hole in the upper part, into which a little finger might be inserted, and which was probably the cause of death.

We can scarcely forebear entertaining the opinion that these are the remains of unhappy persons who had been confined in the dungeons of the Preceptory, for the Templars were forever at feud with their neighbours; and, as they possessed the powers of executing criminals within their own liberties, they would not be very likely to remit, what they might conceive to be the merited punishment of delinquency.

Dr. Oliver was allowed to excavate the site by Charles Chaplin of Blankney Hall, who had recently acquired the Temple Bruer estates.

of Blankney, has evinced a laudable anxiety to preserve the present Tower from ruin, by the introduction of a new roof, and by securing the cracks and fissures in the walls."

It was also shown that part of the passage system described by Oliver was a crypt and the "horrible cavern", the stones of which "had assumed the colour of brick" was a medieval oven structure[8] In 1908 William St John Hope, together with Col. Reeve of Leadenham Hall, and with the permission of Lord Londesborough, the owner, undertook extensive excavations on the site.

The first phase was the church with a round nave, about 15m in diameter, with a ring of eight columns, which distinguished a central area from an outer aisle.

Above the door is a corbel that supported the rib vault of the presbytery roof; while to the right is the triple-shafted respond of the south side of the chancel arch.