A signpost nestling in the verdant green hedgerows so typical of Cheshire pointed my way to the 15th century Gawsworth Hall, once the home of Mary Fytton, the supposed Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Her ghost is still said to haunt the ancient timbers and stone of this friendly, yet stately, home, but no longer does the Fytton family - once known as the ‘Fighting Fyttons’ - hold the family seat. It is now in the incumbency of the Richards family and, more to the point, the Provincial Grand Master of Cheshire, Timothy Richards and his lovely wife Elizabeth.
    A stroll along the drive by the duck-filled lake brought me to the front door where I was met with humour and warmth by this fourth generation Freemason. Having been shown around his home (a classic example of a lived-in working country house open to the public) I was invited to share a pot of tea with the man who can spend anything up to four or five days a week in pursuit of masonic duties. We sat and chatted before pausing to watch a regional television news magazine on the BBC that spotlighted Gawsworth Hall, and then returned to our chat and tea.
    I asked the Provincial Grand Master what Freemasonry meant to him and he answered by relating the story of the time, not so long ago, when a group of children from the Royal School for the Deaf visited his home, having been invited to the Hall before being presented with £5,000 on behalf of the Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys.
    Relaxing in a sumptuous chintz-covered chair amid the book-lined shelves in the library, Timothy Richards explained, “The mini bus came, and when the young people got out of the coach I knew they were all going to be deaf but three were stone deaf, totally blind and mute. One of these boys, called Nana, was from Nigeria. He was a great chap. I held his hands as he could neither see, hear nor speak. One or two of the children became slightly distressed because they were away from their familiar surroundings but he was a really good boy and I led him around the house. We went into the chapel where he touched the wood and the furnishings. When we came out again into the sunshine I had my arm around him, and this 18 year old boy, deaf, dumb and blind, laid his head on my shoulder as a way of saying thank you. This made a very great impression on me and suddenly I was completely reassured that I was doing the right thing masonically.”
    The 58 year old Oxford graduate paused for a moment as if in reflection and then continued, “We are building up to the 2005 Festival when we hope to give several million pounds to the Masonic Trust for Boys and Girls. Up to the time I was appointed Provincial Grand Master, I thought this was an institution that merely looked after sons and daughters of masons whose parents had suffered a loss or had a rough time. We are dealing here not only with the sons and daughters of Freemasons and their dependants, but people in the outside community like the Royal Schools for the Deaf and the challenge of helping them out and, what’s more, those who care for them, who are equally important. Freemasonry has actually made me a better man because I am much more aware now of the distress of those who are disadvantaged and less fortunate than ourselves in the community.”
    Freemasonry is certainly in the blood of this former advertising man who halted his career to look after the family home and to organise open-air concerts and theatre in the grounds. His great grandfather, Thomas Edward Richards, was the headmaster of Macclesfield Grammar School and died in 1888 while in the chair of the Lodge of Unity 267 Macclesfield. His grandfather was in the same lodge; Raymond, his father, was a Past Grand Deacon of the United Grand Lodge of England and in the chair of The Lodge of Unity in 1944. Timothy was Master in 1980. Eldest son Rupert was initiated into the Lodge of Unity at the age of 21, making five consecutive generations in the same lodge. Is this a record?

Born in Southport

Timothy Richards was born in Southport in 1941 where his parents were living during the war; his father being a Liverpool tea merchant, and the family moved back to Gawsworth in 1948, still being part of the Liverpool tea trade until the 1960s when the port went into decline and the ships left. When the city lost its shipping, many businesses struggled, so his father, Raymond, retired.
    The house was opened to the public as a one-off to celebrate nearby Macclesfield’s Charter Year in 1961 and thereafter the home became open-house to the general public. Some open-air Shakespeare plays were held and then the family pioneered more open-air theatre and concerts. Many have now followed. “What started as a hobby became a way of life. If you open your house to the public you become so involved from the minute you wake up in the morning and the phone starts ringing until you go to bed at night. People say ‘What sort of job do you have?’ You haven’t got time for a job because this is now your life. We take the bookings, arrange the theatre, basically everything. This house is not a museum with a family living in it, it is a family house that happens to be open to the public. There is a subtle difference.”
    Educated at Shrewsbury and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, the young Richards spent much of his time, as he says, “on the river”, got his degree and then went to work in advertising for Odhams Press and then IPC. He went to London for six months and stayed for seven years, leaving in 1972 with his wife Elizabeth. They both took over the Hall in 1981.
    Timothy Richards was appointed a Grand Officer in 1991 at the age of 50 as an Acting Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies. “Out of the blue in 1996 I was asked if I would care to be Provincial Grand Master on the retirement of RW Brother the Rev. Canon Stanley Walker who had been PGM for 11 years, a much-loved man of the cloth, a very dear man. It did come as something of a surprise. Mind you, everything in Freemasonry should come as a surprise, really. I accepted because it was a great honour for Macclesfield and it was a great personal challenge, clearly, with Freemasonry entering what was probably one of its most difficult periods.
    “To be PGM you have to make the time so, if you are a working man literally from nine to five, you would find it extremely difficult to get the day off. Being self-employed I can make up my own diary in the winter and work everything in. I can work frantically for part of the day and then go out to the masons in the evening. The trouble is, you see, if you have to go to, say, The Wirral, for a lodge, you have to leave by three to get there by five, and what is an evening meeting suddenly starts to take up half the day to get there and you only have to have a minor traffic jam and you start worrying about being late - and PGMs should not be late!”
    I asked him how many hours he worked for Freemasonry in one week and he replied: “In a winter I am out probably at least four nights a week and the number of hours you can add on for travelling can be four hours for each meeting. I do say I work a 40 hour week just going out, but half the morning is spent with masonic correspondence. I get every summons from each of the lodges, and there are 300 lodges in the Province and 125 chapters and, like every business, where there are 9,000 masons together with that number of lodges, you are always going to get some difficulty which occurs somewhere along the line. It is like being the chief executive of a council and thinking everything will be all right but it isn’t; there is always somebody with a problem.”
    He explained there was a full office staff of a secretary and assistant secretary and office staff of six. “I have a Deputy PGM, Cyril Acton, Past Grand Sword-Bearer, and one of the pleasures is to work with your Deputy and also the Assistant PGMs, of which there are seven. Between us we all manage to run the Province but it is like any hierarchy, the Assistants are in charge of their areas but if there is anything major, it still has to come up the line. So it is actually very demanding because you really do have to be on top of a very large Province.
    “It could be a full-time occupation but you learn to run it in conjunction not only with your work but with your other interests. For instance, I am Patron of the church and have just appointed the parson; it is one of the most important jobs you can do and you have to run this side by side. The most fulfilling side is that some people say they have not the time for Freemasonry and could not take on any further commitments, but I am showing it is possible to be a busy bee both masonically, in the community, and at work - and enjoy all three. The secret is to enjoy everything you do.
    “The masonic side again is that Lord Farnham, who is present Pro Grand Master, has involved PGMs much more in the way forward, or as a think-tank - but I don’t like that word - but he is certainly consulting PGMs much more than has been done in the past.”

Openness

“Take openness for example. We have long discussions on a PGM basis and upwards, on openness and how we are to be perceived by the community, and we are nowadays actively showing ourselves to be masons in the community, whereas it was very much frowned upon ten or twenty years ago. Nobody was meant to know and this has been part of the problem, for we have been perceived to be a secret society where nobody was meant to know what was going on. But in fact that is not now the case and we are opening masonic halls for the public to come and have a look around; we are being encouraged to tell the community we are Freemasons and to try to eliminate some of this secrecy that has not helped our cause over the past years.
    “The problem is that when you openly tell your local community that you are a Freemason, there are some who will say “Ah, this man is a Freemason; we don’t like that. We are going to make it difficult for him”, so I do find it has its drawbacks. If you openly declare that you are a Freemason, it has its pros but it certainly can affect just one or two people who know you are a Freemason. I have had this happen to me. It is the popular conception of Freemasonry that people think there is something odd going on, but there isn’t. We are really just a bunch of rather pleasant, eccentric chaps who do little playlets and then have a meal afterwards, and there is nothing more to it than that, except that we are now perceived to be almost the establishment whilst other institutions are losing their moral authority.
    “Whereas, fifty years ago, one hundred years or two hundred years ago, Freemasons paraded through the streets and went to a church service and were perceived by all to be upright chaps working in the community for the good of the community. Now the community has turned and thinks that Freemasonry is now somehow working against their common good.”

The Craft and the Church

He reflected for a while and mentioned the Church’s role. “I like to involve the Church if possible. You will find I like to take the Provincial Grand Chaplain to meetings of importance so it can be seen that Freemasonry and the Church are still hand in hand. I am not saying which church; it can be any denomination, but it is important for the PGM and the Church with a capital C to be seen to be recognising each other and to be working hand in hand.
    “At the end of the evening I will ask the chaplain to say a prayer of thanksgiving and give a masonic blessing, so it becomes quite clear that Timothy Richards, PGM, is not afraid of the Church. He wants to work with the Church, and that it is actually part of my masonic ethos, and I think it is very important these days for, as you can see, I have very strong links with the Church whereas I am not a padre myself.”
    Sipping at his tea, he went on: “The Province of Cheshire is 275 years old next year; we are the oldest recognised Province outside London (there were many lodges in the Province before 1725) but Freemasonry was recognised in Cheshire when the brethren of the Sun Inn at Chester gathered together and they actually sent in a return to Grand Lodge saying, “We are the brethren of Cheshire and have just appointed a PGM”, so that was noted and so we were recognised as the Masonic Province of Cheshire, and other counties looked round and thought that was a good idea, so the whole system of Provincial Freemasonry started. Cheshire was the first, so in the millennium year we are celebrating this.
    “On May 11th we are holding an ecumenical church service in Chester Cathedral where we hope that the county, the diocese and the Province will come together in common worship and thanksgiving. I choose my words carefully because the county means the county hierarchy, the Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff, Mayors, etc., and the diocese is not only the diocese but churches in general, and then there is the Province, the masonic lodges, all of whom have different agendas, but we hope to involve the whole. To mark this service we are giving a gift of a new organ to the Song School which is being built in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral.
    “As PGM, I have a strategy to try to bring back those links we used to take for granted but have drifted. This is where you need a PGM who has some form of strategic grand plan at the back of his mind, planning for the next ten years.”
    Still sipping his tea, he continued, “In addition, you then have, running side by side, the decline in Freemasons of about four per cent a year. We are seeing this decline for two reasons. Number one: Masonry is not exactly the flavour of the month with the outside community, and number two: there was such an enormous influx of men who came back from the war in the late 1940s, all of whom are now reaching full maturity, and you are now seeing an exaggerated number of masons who are dying because there was a masonic bulge. We as a Province have to decide whether to let some lodges flounder or do we try to keep the status quo as long as possible, in the hope that the decline will bottom out, and eventually we might get an increase of one or two per cent more each year?
    “The interesting point is that all publicity is good publicity in many ways. So Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor, etc., in one sense made people ask what Freemasonry is and why are they doing this to us? Funnily enough, this bad publicity is making men actually analyse what they are joining, and is making Freemasons themselves analyse what they are doing.”

Fellowship

Timothy Richards is a member of a London lodge (Lodge of Felicity No.58) where he is Senior Warden. “I find that as a mason and a man I can be sitting in my lodge in Macclesfield one night, where I have a group of people I consider to be very close friends; the next night I can go to London and sit with another group who are equally my friends and this is a pleasure of Freemasonry. You can sit in any lodge and find yourself surrounded by friends. It isn’t that we are ‘putting it on’; there is something about a community of men where women are not involved, and of course this is where universities, schools, institutions, which are male only, have prospered so well over the years because men do get on so well together.”
    I asked: “If there should be a movement towards accepting women in Freemasonry, how would you feel?” He replied: “Well, I think one has to accept the fact - and Grand Lodge accepts the fact - that we are moving into the 21st century. There are female lodges and there are mixed lodges as I understand it. Until recently we were told not to even think about female lodges. We pretended they did not exist, but now we accept they are there and it will be an interesting development to see if there will be more communication, which I think there will be, between the men and women, and I think that one of the developments we shall see in the next 25 years is that there will possibly be more communication. I am not saying any more than communication, but there will be more recognition that the two sides actually co-exist side by side, and there may well be some sort of lodges in the middle where both might be equally acceptable.”
    We concluded with a look at how he relaxes. He told me that he and his son, Rupert, participate in historic car racing in the Isle of Man every September. He races period cars. “That is my recreation” he said, “where I can test myself, not only against myself, but against others with a certain element of danger, and I think as you grow older it is no bad thing to test yourself occasionally.”
    He is the proud owner of a Daimler SP250 and they both race Morgans, winning two classes in the hill-climbs last year. He is rightly proud of his two sons (his youngest, Jonathan, is at Durham Business School), proud of his home, proud of his Freemasonry and proud of his outlook. “I am who I am” he concluded, “and it is one of the keys of Freemasonry that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and I want to encourage the younger people to join and talk naturally with the older ones and vice versa.”
    Doug Pickford