A FITTING MEMORIAL A talk by VW Bro John Hamill, PGSwdB, to mark the 75th Anniversary of the opening of Freemasons' Hall (Quarterly Communications of Grand Lodge on 10 September 2008)

On the 18th July 1933 some 6,299 brethren gathered at the Royal Albert Hall for an especial Grand Lodge meeting. The MW The Grand Master, HRH The Duke of Connaught, a younger son of Queen Victoria, presided accompanied by no less than four Royal Princes; HRH The Prince of Wales (later Duke of Windsor), HRH The Duke of York (later King George VI), HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught (the Grand Master’s son) and the young Prince George, later to be Duke of Kent, our Grand Master and the father of our present Grand Master. The purpose of the meeting was twofold: to welcome the forty three delegations from sister Grand Lodges who had come to take part in the celebrations for the completion of the present Freemasons’ Hall, and to invest HRH Prince George as Senior Grand Warden.

The following day some 5,353 brethren filled the Grand Temple and all the lodge rooms in this building to again welcome the Grand Master and the Royal Princes. The Grand Master solemnly dedicated the new Masonic Peace Memorial, as it was then known, to the service of God and of Freemasonry. To enable the brethren not in the Grand Temple to take part in the ceremony radio links were established between the Grand Temple and each of the Lodge Rooms. At the end of the ceremony the Grand Master toured the whole building, stopping in each of the Lodge rooms to greet the assembled brethren.

 The two meetings were the highlights of a whole week of celebrations for a project that had taken fourteen years to achieve. In June 1919 an especial Grand Lodge had been held, again at the Albert Hall, to celebrate the coming of peace after the cataclysm of the First World War and to take into consideration how best to commemorate those brethren who had given their lives in service of King and Country. The Duke of Connaught had intended presiding at the meeting but fell victim to the Spanish ‘flu epidemic then sweeping through Europe. He sent a message, however, in which he suggested that the most fitting and permanent memorial to the fallen brethren would be to build a new home for the “Mother Grand Lodge” in what he described as “the metropolis of empire”. The idea was taken up with alacrity, not least, I suspect, because the Grand Master insisted that the project be funded not by a levy on the Craft but by voluntary donations.

As is usual, a special Committee was set up to get the project going. The Masonic Million Memorial Fund was instituted to raise one million pounds, the projected cost of the building. To raise funds a series of special jewels were designed. The most famous, still to be seen today, is the Hall Stone jewel and collarette which was to be presented to be worn in perpetuity by the Masters of those lodges which contributed a minimum of ten guineas per subscribing member to the fund.  The presentation of the jewels to the Masters of qualifying Lodges was to be a regular feature of Quarterly Communications until the fund was finally closed in 1938.

The first problem the Special Committee had to face was where the new building should be. Grand Lodge had been gradually acquiring property to the west of the then Freemasons’ Hall, with the intention of extending the existing building as a memorial to King Edward VII who, as Prince of Wales, had been Grand Master from 1874 until he succeeded Queen Victoria in 1901. Various groups within Grand Lodge wanted to take the opportunity of moving away from Great Queen Street. Sites on the Adelphi, at Kings Cross, Paddington, Euston and even in the suburbs were looked at. A very emotional debate was held in Grand Lodge in 1922 during which it was powerfully argued that we should stay in Great Queen Street where we had been since 1775 and where sufficient property had been acquired to fulfil the Grand Master’s wish of having a suitable and commodious building to act both as the head quarters of English Freemasonry and the principal meeting place for London Lodges and Royal Arch Chapters.

The next step was to consider designs. In 1925 through the Royal Institute of British Architects an international architects competition was announced, with Sir Edwyn Lutyens, not a Freemason, as the Chairman of the assessors. Over one hundred architects from around the world submitted preliminary designs. Of these, ten were selected to be worked up as plans and scale drawings. The main problem for the architects had been the irregular shape of the site and the desire to have the Grand Temple at the centre of the building on an East – West axis. Another problem was the sheer size and weight of the intended structure and the fact that London is built on clay, which even at that time was drying out as the water table dropped. The winning architects were the partnership of H. V. Ashley and Winton Newman. Knowing of the problems involved, before beginning their designs they had travelled to America to study the construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago. They came up with a design based on a steel frame which would spread the load and lessen the amount of stone which would be needed to construct a free-standing building. Freemasons’ Hall became one of the first major steel framed buildings to be erected in England.

The 1920s were a period of economic uncertainty, leading to the General Strike in 1926 and the collapse of the world economy in 1929. After the initial enthusiasm the fund raising began to flag. Taking the lead from the Masonic Charities, it was decided in 1925 to have a major festival to boost the funds. On Saturday, 8th August 1925 over 7,000 brethren joined the Grand Master for lunch at Olympia in West London. The event still stands in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ever sit-down meal held in the British Isles. For the five course lunch five miles of tables were laid with 50,000 plates, 30,000 glasses, 30,000 knives, 37,000 forks and 15,000 spoons. An army of 1,250 waitresses served the diners with salmon, lamb cutlets, chicken garnished with tongue and York Ham followed by strawberries and ice cream. The courses were accompanied by sherry, sauternes, champagne and brandy and liqueurs.

At the end of lunch the Grand Master was able to announce that £825,000 had been paid into or promised to the Masonic Million Memorial Fund. That gave the Grand Secretary a problem. He had only a small staff whose time was fully taken up with administering the Craft and Royal Arch with no time to take on the management and huge amount of paperwork involved in the fund raising. He was empowered to take on five new temporary staff to administer the fund. They were all boys who had recently completed the commercial stream at the Royal Masonic School for Boys. Temporary does not do justice to their service to Grand Lodge. They were all kept on when the new building was completed and each of them served Grand Lodge for forty nine years and had become the senior management in the Grand Secretary’s office by the time I joined the Grand Lodge Library staff in 1971.

By 1927 the plans had been agreed, the whole site had been acquired, finance had been assured and work could begin. On 14 July 1927 the Royal Albert Hall was pressed into Masonic service again. An especial Grand Lodge was held to lay the foundation stone of the new building. By means of an electrical relay as the Grand Master laid the mock stone on the stage of the Albert Hall the actual stone was duly laid on the corner of the building. The event in Great Queen Street was witnessed by the Masters of the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2 and the Royal Somerset and Inverness Lodge No. 4 who then jumped into a waiting taxi and sped to Kensington Gore to inform the Grand Master that the actual stone had been well and truly laid.

The business of Grand Lodge had to continue and Lodges meeting in the old Hall had to continue to have a meeting place. The decision was therefore taken to keep the old Hall going as long as possible. The properties to the west of the Hall were demolished and the steel work for the tower, Grand Temple and Wild Street and Wild Court areas began to rise. By 1931 the west end of the building was complete and the Grand Secretary’s office was moved into what is now Lodge Room No. 10, Lodges and Chapters were transferred into the new Lodge rooms and demolition of the old Hall began to enable the east end of the building to rise.

A problem arose over the original Grand Hall designed by Thomas Sandby in 1775. It was on the site of what is now the Balmoral Room in the Connaught Rooms and it was hoped that it could be incorporated in the new building. In 1883, however, Sandby’s Hall had been severely damaged by fire. Although it was reconstructed the work hid more than it repaired. When the local authority surveyors looked at it in 1931, when the rest of the old Hall was being demolished they stated that it was structurally unsound and that would have to be remedied if it was to survive. That would have involved huge expense which Grand Lodge could ill-afford as, nothing changes brethren, construction costs were proving greater than the estimates. After debate in Grand Lodge it was agreed that Sandby’s Hall which had served Grand Lodge since 1775 had to be demolished but was kept in use until 1931.

Work went on apace and was completed to enable the great celebrations to take place in July 1933. The new building was a stunning success as an example of the latest technology and building practices. It was written up in all the architectural and building journals and was given great coverage in the national and international press. It was to be known as the Masonic Peace Memorial, for it is not just the memorial shrine that commemorates those who died on active service but the whole building itself is the memorial, something that occasionally gets forgotten. It was only with the outbreak of the Second World that the building reverted to being called Freemasons’ Hall.

Although conceived of as a memorial the building did not become a mausoleum. It has been a very living building and has shown itself capable of adaption as times change, despite the restrictions of being a Grade 2* listed building both inside and out. Over the years various changes have been made to the building expanding the areas available for formal meetings. In the last few years the Hall has been an almost permanent building site with work going on to remove asbestos and the major project to convert storage and filing areas in the lower ground floor area into modern offices so that the national Masonic Charities could be located in this building and work more closely together. Once other minor work is completed we look forward to welcoming the Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London’s staff and volunteers back into the building. The observant amongst you will have noticed scaffolding in the courtyard and some hoardings on the first and second floors – part of the necessary work to replace the original fire escapes to this Grand Temple.

In recent years we have been developing non-Masonic activity in the building to increase revenues. This was thought by some to be a revolutionary idea but, as so often in Freemasonry, it was re-inventing of the wheel as the original Freemasons’ Hall built in 1775 had been very much a public as well as a Masonic building. We are justifiably proud of what has become recognised as a jewel of art deco architecture and design and are delighted to be able to share it with the community as a whole.

At the dedication of the building on 19th July 1933 the Grand Chaplain, the Bishop of  Guildford, in his oration said of the building “It stands in its dignity, its beauty of proportion, its harmony of mass and line, its warmth and restraint in colour and lighting, its suggestion of strength and durability, and the aptness of its planning. It represents the dream of a real architect, made substantial by experienced builders and craftsmen; all alike giving of their best.” He went on to say that “that which we joyously acclaim today is not the close of a great work, but the finish of its preface. The volume that is to follow is not yet written but will slowly develop in the ages to come.” Seventy five years later we can echo what he said. The opening chapters of the volume are now complete but the story, we hope, will have no ending and this great Masonic Peace Memorial will continue to house our Craft and be the physical embodiment of those principles and tenets which are fundamental to our brotherhood, for generations to come.