THE HALL IN THE GARDEN: Freemasons’ Hall and its place in London Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Lewis Masonic, London, 2006. Paperback, 96 pages, £14.99. ISBN 0 85318 264 7.

In the past few years the Library and Museum of Freemasonry has not been shy about trumpeting its excellence, about letting both Freemasons and others know about its rich heritage and the veritable treasure trove of its collections. With the excellent article by Yasha Beresiner in the last issue of Freemasonry Today about those masonic treasures in Freemasons’ Hall not included in the Museum’s collections, we got a sense of how the staff at the Museum have a proprietary feel for the whole building.
    And here, to coincide with the excellent exhibition The Hall in the Garden currently running in Great Queen Street, we have a superb production by the same name researched, written, and some of it photographed, by the staff of the Museum and Library. I wondered at first if someone was being too modest by saying, in the Acknowledgments, merely that the book ‘has been written by staff’, but it really does appear that this is a team effort, and that speaks volumes about the spirit that currently reigns there.
    That the present Freemasons’ Hall is the fourth to stand on the site, depending on who is counting, and that the histories of the earlier three are very well documented indeed, isn’t something that I knew a lot about, and probably nonmasonic residents and city workers in the area don’t either. The growth of the various Halls seems to have happened alongside that of the Covent Garden Market, and from 1843 alongside the growth of the theatre industry. From early times Great Queen Street was also a centre for bookselling and publishing; names such as Kenning and Spencer were current.
    The great accomplishment of this superbly presented volume is the skill with which the writer(s) have woven the fortunes of Freemasonry together with those of the community in Covent Garden. The book is well laid out, as one would expect with such wellqualified progenitors, and I can only describe the photography (of which there is a great deal, but not too much) as stunning.
    Julian Rees