One perennial legend associated with Irish Freemasonry is that of Mrs Elizabeth (Richard) Aldworth neé St Leger, ‘The Lady Freemason’. While very little of her story can be confirmed by solid documentation there is certainly evidence, according to the Grand Lodge of Ireland, of masonic activity relating to her story: she was very involved in masonic charitable work and a patron of the Craft during her lifetime.
    Elizabeth St Leger was born in 1693, the fourth child and only daughter of 1st Viscount Doneraile. The story reports that she was caught in the act of spying in her father’s library in County Cork where a second-degree ceremony was taking place and at which her father was the Master; as a result of this, the story adds, she was initiated into Freemasonry some time around 1710-1713. She is buried in the cathedral in Cork and an apron attributed to her is today on display in the Provincial Grand Lodge of Munster, at Cork.
    From the archives of Grand Lodge, with which our hostess Rebecca Hayes the Archivist is particularly familiar, she was able to retrieve for us what is believed to be Elizabeth Leger’s leather bound diary with a damaged cover and clasp and entries beginning 29 July 1753. The entries are in fact a record of recipes - the first a medical recipe for a cold - payments and receipts and transcripts of bills of exchange, several for considerable sums of money. The evidence that the notebook is the property of Elizabeth Aldworth herself is to be found in a loose sheet of paper inserted into the diaries in which the manuscript entries of several receipts are personally signed Eliz. Aldworth. For the 275th anniversary celebrations of the Grand Lodge in Ireland in 2000, the Museum purchased a contemporary painting of Mrs Richard Aldworth attributed to the Irish portrait artist Garret Morphy (fl.1676 - d.1716).
    Though the Grand Lodge Museum does not own Elizabeth Aldworth’s original apron, it possesses a stupendous collection of early aprons made of silk, linen and pure lambskin, all of them decorated with the emblems and symbols of the Craft and other Orders. They are carefully protected and pleasingly displayed in frames on the wall and a dozen pull out trays, each carefully labelled and accurately dated.
    Striking among the many examples is an intricately hand-embroidered apron with the familiar design of the allegorical figures of Charity, Truth and Prudence flanked by two columns. Interestingly the exact same design, now professionally engraved, is used as a transfer on an adjoining apron on display. The implication of this repetitive pattern is that there must have been, in the 1830s, a common source for these apron designs.
    A large cabinet is dedicated to Irish Military Lodges with a display of the regimental banner, drums and lancets and other military artefacts dated 1796, of the first Volunteer Lodge of Ireland. The importance of these displays in the historic content of the development of Freemasonry worldwide cannot be over emphasised. It was Irish military Lodges that were the first to be given ambulatory warrants in 1732, referred to as ‘travelling lodge’ warrants in England. The beginnings of Freemasonry in the early 18th century in New South Wales and Tasmania as well as the West Indies is directly attributed to the introduction of the Craft to those territories by Irish Military Lodges.
    The two central cabinets display some exceptional jewels, many manufactured in the late eighteenth century by the Irish jeweller and Freemason, James Brush. He specialised in masonic jewellery and an excellent example of the quality of his work is to be found in the large commemorative silver encrusted jewel, set with paste stones in a framework design, inscribed:

Presented to Charles Scales by the Brethren of Good Intent Lodge No.387
12th December 1811