The people are warm and friendly, the food is good, the beer is excellent and the place is as bright as a button, but Leeds in a thunderstorm might not be top of everyone’s priorities. However, on the day I met proud Yorkshireman Jim Reddyhoff, the world, in spite of the drenching, became a brighter place.
    A Past Master of the Leeds and District Lodge of Installed Masters, Past Master of Leeds’ Fidelity Lodge, Honorary Librarian of the Yorkshire West Riding Province, and a member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, Jim celebrated 52 years in the Craft in June of this year. He is a mine of information on all things masonic and the main man for anything about Leeds’ sparkling masonic past - not that everything is as it was in days of yore. Like most cities and towns, parts of the Leeds of old have had to make way for the new, and while many will revel in the brave new world, others may long for the cosiness of yesteryear. A garage under a railway arch is now the site of one former masonic hostelry, an ultramodern shopping arcade now stands where cockfights were held and masons gathered for ritual and friendship, and a road has bludgeoned its way through yet another former masonic meeting place. Such is life, but Jim was able to point me in the direction of other buildings which, although now either completely rebuilt or ‘modernised’ to look old, once welcomed our Craft forebears.

The Good Old Days

Leeds’ principal coaching inns (c.1790-1840 - where masons met) were The Royal (formerly the Hotel Inn); The Talbot on Briggate (one of Leeds’ main thoroughfares), pulled down to make Thornton’s Arcade; the Rose and Crown, Briggate, demolished to make another arcade; the White Horse on Boar Lane, destroyed when the road was widened last century; the Golden Lion on Briggate, rebuilt last century, and the Star and Garter on the corner of Duncan Street and Call Lane, the shell of which is still there, but at the time of writing looks extremely sad and sorry for itself. Others which have not survived include The White Cross, Briggate, The Ship off Briggate, and The Black Swan at the top of Vicar Lane. Some still in situ include The Swan in Swan Street, now home to the world-famous City Varieties. This is where the likes of Charles Chaplin, Houdini and others trod the boards and, much later, TV brought us the delights of “The Good Old Days”. The Griffin, opposite the railway station, is still there and is now a huge hotel. This was the last inn in which Alfred Lodge 306 (founded in 1795 and still thriving) met before moving to private rooms and later a masonic hall.
    Jim is of the opinion that many Leeds lodges persuaded the innkeepers and - at a slightly later time - wine and spirit merchants, to become masons so that the lodges might obtain extended credit. This may be illustrated by the case of David Kirkman who kept the Golden Fleece in Ebenezer Street. He was initiated into Philanthropic Lodge in April 1815. The Book of Constitutions of 1815 had laid down that no master of the tavern or house at which a lodge met should be appointed an officer in such a lodge without a dispensation from the Grand Master or Provincial Grand Master. Although Philanthropic Lodge did not meet at the Golden Fleece until 1833, they nevertheless obtained such a dispensation in 1820. Mr Kirkman was Senior Warden in 1820 and 1821 and six times Worshipful Master, becoming Provincial Senior Grand Deacon in 1825.
    Jim’s research uncovered the number of times lodges moved in those early years. The first lodge, The Parrott, which received its warrant from the Moderns in 1774 (comprised of artisans), moved round four different inns from 1754 to 1775; the second lodge, The Golden Lion, (formed by cloth merchants in 1761), had five meeting places from 1790 to 1797. Until it moved to a masonic hall, Fidelity Lodge had nine different venues. Why did they move so often?
    Jim says the minutes were often silent on the reasons but they can often be deduced. The Golden Lion Lodge, for instance, first met in 1761 at The Talbot in Briggate, one of the principal inns of the time. During the 18th century it became the haunt of the sporting fraternity; it was Leeds’s centre for cock-fighting and during race meetings on Chapeltown Moor, the clerk of the course took up his quarters at The Talbot where entries for races were received and handicaps fixed. The lodge moved to Bro Richard Cooke’s Old King’s Arms (he had been initiated the previous year) and in 1760 he had begun to run coaches called “Flying Machines” from there - Masonry linking new prosperity and progress. The lodge only lasted 6 months there and returned to The Talbot. Minutes record that Bro Cooke and a Samuel Davenport had been expelled from the lodge for “degrading the society and their ways and acting contrary to our by-laws”. We can only guess at what was going on. Another move was afoot - to the Golden Lion - which was to become a coaching inn. The host was George Esh or Ash, originally blackballed twice, but later installed. His son-in-law, a mason, introduced coaches and in 1814 Bro Hugh Black, the guard of the Rockingham coach, joined Philanthropic Lodge. For some years he used to carry the remittances of the Leeds lodges to Grand Lodge and on the return would deliver the printed minutes of the Quarterly Communications. He was killed in 1827 - knocked off the roof of the coach as it entered Golden Lion yard.
    Jim explains what it was like to hold a lodge meeting in those days : “To begin with, it should be stressed that most of the business was done sitting round a table and that attendances scarcely exceeded 20. The days of chalking the lodge on the floor had gone before my own lodge, Fidelity, first met in 1792, to be replaced by painted floor cloths, no doubt resembling modern tracing boards. The minutes show that in 1801 a motion was made for the Tyler to have a new cap; in 1803 a “Preparative Shoe” was purchased; in 1804 the Master and Wardens were provided with armchairs; in 1806, Bro Johnston received a medal for painting the emblems on the officers’ chairs, whilst a plate was engraved for printing the aprons. All in all, I feel that, suitably dressed in the costume of the period, any of us today could have taken our places in such a lodge and understood the ritual completely.”