THE HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA LODGE No. 50 J.T. Thorp, A. Pickering, et al., Knights of Malta Lodge, Hinckley, 2003. Hardback, 232 pages.

Lodge histories tend often to be of interest only to the lodge members themselves, and when that history goes back two hundred years or more, then even the interest of members begins to be stretched, unless the history is interwoven with matters of national or international note.
    There are of course very few lodges for which that last statement is true, the majority having led unexceptional existences, and sadly, for all its two hundred years of existence, the Knights of Malta Lodge is no different. It is not difficult to compile a catalogue of events, in slavishly chronological fashion, but to invest these events with anything like a narrative requires exceptional circumstances or consummate literary skill, or a combination of the two.
    This lodge was in origin an ‘Antients’ lodge, No. 47, founded at Macclesfield in 1764, but not, presumably, under the present name. It was in 1803 that it removed to Hinckley, and the author gives us some interesting glimpses of how operative masons might have been employed at the time in that area.
    The lodge is also to be congratulated for having preserved so intact sundry documents of great age, particularly correspondence in the years around 1803, yet the history is presented in a very confusing way, all the historians who have had a go at it over the years adding their amendments and additions to what has gone before. Might it not have been better to construct a new history, incorporating the older ones, in a cohesive whole? The plethora of appendices at the end might then have been used as an enhancement of the main body.
    One thing is without question – the lodge artefacts have been preserved with great love and care, and in particular the ‘Arke’ or Warrant Box is a gem. The Ancient Lodge Tracing Board also is of a most interesting design, and indicates the provenance of the lodge from the Antients.
    Julian Rees