Cambridge Shows the Way

At their January meeting, Isaac Newton University Lodge No. 859 initiated eight candidates simultaneously. The lodge was constituted in 1861 as the Lodge for Cambridge University.
     Before World War Two, the lodge regularly performed all three degrees on a single afternoon, when candidate numbers would often exceed half a dozen for each degree. In the last 50 years it has been rather more subdued – two ceremonies at most meetings, usually performed on two candidates.
     However, for more than a decade there have been between three and five candidates at most ceremonies, but January’s meeting was exceptional.
     The meeting was attended by Senior Grand Warden George Francis and the Province’s former Provincial Grand Master, Colin Hutchinson. The lodge committee has since interviewed a further 10 University members.

Geology Student Welcomed

University of Birmingham Lodge No. 5628, in the Province of Warwickshire, has initiated its first undergraduate of the University since 1944 when Fergus Robert Sinclair Smith, aged 19, studying geology, was made a mason by dispensation.
     The evening was even more special since an undergraduate initiated in 1944 – Michael Roper-Hall – took part in the ceremony. Michael has been an active lodge member since then, being Master on six occasions. The lodge is a member of the University Lodges Scheme and Sebastian Madden, a Grand Steward and co-ordinator of the Scheme, was also present.

Celebrating a Royal Anniversary

Sixty British vehicles lined up on Horse Guards Parade Ground in March to commemorate the Diamond Wedding of the Queen and Prince Philip. All sixty vehicles were in production in 1947, the year of the royal wedding. They were then driven in convoy to the Tower of London and displayed on the Wharf.
     At least a dozen of the vehicles present were owned by Freemasons from all over the UK. It was particularly appropriate that the Duke of Kent – Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England – was present on behalf of the Queen and Prince Philip.
     The Duke travelled with the vehicles and then inspected them all, talking with every owner. The Duke had tasked the entrants with raising sponsorship for two of his favourite charities, Leukaemia Research and the Stroke Association.
     On the day the total raised was £5,000, but with more to come from many entrants, it is hoped that the final total will be closer to £10,000.

Emulation Lodge of Improvement Annual Festival

The Annual Festival of Emulation Lodge of Improvement this year saw the four Lecture Sections worked from the Second Lecture, with Precepting Committee members working as Lecture Masters and lodge members answering the questions.
     These Lectures are directly descended from the Grand Stewards’ lectures which were worked after the Union of the Antient and Moderns in 1813, and have been worked regularly by Emulation Lodge of Improvement since it was founded in 1823.
     They represent the main work done by lodges in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and contain much of the allegorical and philosophical background to the actual ceremonies.
     The Preceptors’ Festival is divided into two parts, with one of the three ceremonies being worked in rotation in the first part, and the Installation ceremony being worked in the second part.

Order of Women Freemasons Celebrate their Centenary

The Order of Women Freemasons – The Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Masonry – celebrated its centenary at the Royal Albert Hall in June, presided over by the Grand Master, Brenda Irene Fleming-Taylor.
     There were more than 4,000 Brethren (as lady masons call themselves) and their guests at the event, many having travelled from overseas lodges in Canada, Australia, Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland, South Africa and Spain.
     The celebrations opened with a procession of Grand Officers, followed by the Deputy Grand Master which preceded the entry of the Grand Master, whose arrival was heralded by a fanfare of trumpets.
     Emulating the tradition of former grand occasions, the presentation of the ‘Pageant of Banners’ took place. Each lodge banner, borne by brethren of the lodges, entered the auditorium and paid homage to the Grand Master.
     There was also an impressive procession of officers of those Degrees beyond the Craft, illustrating the extent to which the Order has expanded, providing a colourful spectacle.
     The Grand Master addressed the assembly, and everyone joined in the Service of Thanksgiving for the achievement of Founding Brethren and the Grand Masters of the Order throughout the past century.
     The second part of the celebrations opened as charity donations, cheques of £250,000, marking the centenary of the Order, being presented by the Grand Master to representatives of Cancer Research UK and MacMillan Nurses respectively.
     There then followed a cavalcade, in words and music, celebrating the history of women’s Freemasonry.

Photographs of the event will appear in the next issue of Freemasonry Today.

New Lifeboat Launched in Wales

At a naming ceremony and service of dedication, Liam O’Donoghue, Master of Lodge of Friendship No. 5909, Province of Warwickshire, named a new Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat at Aberystwyth for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).
     The lifeboat, named Spirit of Friendship, is an Atlantic 85, the most advanced inshore lifeboat ever produced by the RNLI. Its introduction at Aberystwyth is thanks to the legacy of Joan Bate, sister of the late Arthur Bate, one of the first initiates of Lodge of Friendship, Master on three occasions and a member for 48 years until his death in 1992.
     The Master was accompanied by several lodge members and their families amongst the station officers and other VIP guests at the ceremony.
     Joan Bate generously bequeathed sufficient monies to purchase three lifeboats, one at Conwy to replace the Arthur Bate, one at Salcombe in Devon and the latest addition. Since she arrived last October, the Spirit of Friendship has launched twelve times and rescued eight people.

Survey of Lodge and Chapter Records

Len Reilly has been appointed as the Project Manager for the Historical Records Survey which was launched by Lord Northampton, the Pro Grand Master, at the end of 2007.
     Len will be working for two days a week for the next two years and will be based in the Library and Museum at Freemasons’ Hall in London. He will be advising and liaising with Provincial Coordinators, collating the survey and also undertaking research into lodge and chapter records which may be held on local record offices or other non-Masonic locations.
     Len is qualified as both a librarian and archivist, with lots of experience working with archives and local history collections. He has just completed a book about the history of the London Borough of Southwark. He is looking forward to working on this project, and said: “This is a very important national survey which will provide researchers in Masonic history with essential information about what is available and where.
     “The Provincial Co-ordinators are already working hard to make sure that we have accurate and comprehensive information from individual lodges and chapters and I am looking forward to helping them achieve success”.

West Kent's £173,000 for Children's Hospice

West Kent masons have done everything from going on ‘quad bike safaris’ to tucking into curry for charity, to raise £173,000 to help bring help and happiness to sick children.
     The 6,000-plus masons of the Province took only nine months to raise the bumper amount, which will help build a Demelza Children’s Hospice at Eltham, south London. Provincial Grand Master Jonathan Winpenny handed a cheque to TV personality and singer, Cheryl Baker, representing Demelza.
     Recently, the PGM visited Eltham with his wife, Gillian, and he hopes to top up their contribution by £200,000 by the end of October. West Kent masons have often sent individual contributions to the main Demelza hospice at Sittingbourne, East Kent.
     He said: “As soon as I heard they were building this place in West Kent, I knew the brethren of our Province would want to support it. Children and hospices are very emotive issues.”
     The hospice is at present about 75 per cent completed, and it is hoped to open it next January. The centre, the first children’s hospice in south London, will cost £6 million. Demelza project manager, Tim Blair, said: “We are very thrilled at what the masons have done. They have raised an amazing amount of money.”
     Demelza Director of Fundraising, James Hanaway, added: “We rely pretty much on fund-raising for the building and running costs. This is a fantastic contribution from the masons of West Kent.”

Sheffield Director's Inaugural Address

Dr. Andreas Önnerfors, the newly appointed Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry (CRF), part of Sheffield University’s Institute for Humanities Research, delivered his inaugural address on an important aspect of research into Freemasonry.
     In a presentation entitled The press between the private and the public: Freemasonry as a topic in eighteenth-century newspapers, Dr Önnerfors focused on an area of research that has been somewhat neglected by both masonic and professional historians.
     The event, which took place in the Centre’s recently renovated and specially extended Victorian building, drew an audience of around 70 attendees and included many of the university’s fellow academicians.
     Following an introduction by Professor David Sheppard, Sheffield University’s Director of Arts and Humanities Division, Dr. Önnerfors presented a comparative analysis of two major masonic journals of the late eighteenth century: Journal für Freymaurer, published in Austria from 1782 to 1786, and The Freemason’s Magazine, published in England from 1792 to 1798.
     As Dr. Önnerfors pointed out, this was the first time that these publications have been surveyed in this particular fashion and he revealed interesting parallels between the content and general character of the two publications.
     He also showed how, in spite of Freemasonry’s much trumpeted ‘secrecy’, the association actually participated in the public sphere to a far greater degree than is popularly believed.
     Indeed, the press of the day reveals that the late-eighteenth-century lodges and their members were openly involved in either staging or participating in public events such as processions, plays and concerts.
     The lecture, which was well received, was recorded in digital format and will soon be made available on the CRF’s website at www.freemasonry.dept.shef.ac.uk
     In addition, Dr. Önnerfors has also announced that the subject will also form the basis for a much larger research project on the theme of Freemasonry and the eighteenth-century European press.

Internet Lodge Competition Awards

The Pro Grand Master, Lord Northampton presented the Internet Lodge Short Papers Competition awards, which he sponsored, in Manchester to Alan Bergin and Karen Kidd.
     Alan Bergin, a Dorset mason living in Tenerife, won the Northampton Award for his paper, Were King Solomon’s Pillars Hexagonal? Alan is currently a member of Tenerife Lodge No. 117, Grand Lodge of Spain but was a member of St Mark Lodge No. 8479 in Dorset when he wrote the paper.
     Karen Kidd, a member of the Honourable Order of American Co-Masonry in Seattle, landed the World Award prize for her paper I Am Regular.
     There were 70 entries from 16 countries for these inaugural awards, which are expected to become an annual event. See also Freemasonry Today, Issue No. 2, Spring 2008, page 15 or go to www.internet.lodge.org.uk for more information.

Guide to Dutch Masonic Archives

The OVN, a Dutch foundation for the advancement of academic research into the history of Freemasonry in the Netherlands, recently published a guide to masonic archives and documents preserved in public collections in the Netherlands.
     The presentation of the guide took place in the Royal or National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague earlier this year, and the presentation was accompanied by a symposium entitled, Secret knowledge: the unique archives and libraries of Masonic and esoteric organisations.
     Several distinguished scholars delivered presentations at the symposium, including the former holder of the Chair studying Freemasonry at the University of Leiden, Professor Dr. Ton van de Sande.
     He spoke about Holland’s most important masonic collection, the archives, library and museum of the Order of Freemasons of the Grand East of the Netherlands, housed in the Cultural Masonic Centre ‘Prins Frederik’ in The Hague.
     The archive contains records of the Dutch Grand Lodge dating from 1756, as well as the private records of more than fifty lodges under its jurisdiction.
     At the heart of the archive is the personal library of the nineteenth-century Dutch masonic collector, George Burckhardt Kloss, a physician and scholar, whose collection was purchased and donated to the Order by the former Dutch Grand Master, Prince Frederik, in the nineteenth century.
     The original object collection was lost during the Second World War, but reformed and expanded through the efforts of curator Beitj Croiset van Uchelen after 1945. It is now regarded as one of the most important collections for the study of freemasonry in the world.

Anyone interested in obtaining copies of the guide should contact: OVN, PO Box 92004, 1090 AA Amsterdam, the Netherlands, info@stichtingovn.nl

Robert Burns Arouses Interest

Edinburgh is hosting next year’s International Conference on the History of Freemasonry (ICHF) in the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, who became a mason in 1781.
     Already the conference has aroused considerable interest since it was launched in 2007, with plans well advanced for it to be held every two years at different venues.
     “It has been somewhat of a surprise to the Academic Committee as to the number of proposals already submitted, including several on the subject of Brother Robert Burns and the impact that Freemasonry had on his life and work” said Andreas Önnerfors, Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University.
     Dr Önnerfors has been very active in promoting the new MA course offered by the University on the History of Freemasonry, which will neatly compliment the ICHF. The 2011 ICHF (27-29 May) will be held at the George Washington National Masonic Memorial (see: www.gwmemorial.org).
     The ICHF web site is at www.ichfonline.org