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Malta
There are seven Lodges – Three English,
three Irish and one Scottish – meeting in
Malta. It is the intention of the Grand Lodge
of Ireland, following consultation with
Grand Lodge of Scotland and this Grand
Lodge to constitute a Grand Lodge of Malta
on Saturday, 20 November 2004.
The Board of General Purposes has
agreed that an English deputation should
accept an invitation to go to Malta in order to
lend support to the Grand Lodge of Ireland.
By the time this Grand Lodge meets in
December, the Grand Lodge of Malta will
have been in existence for almost three weeks.
The Board would prefer that the new
Grand Lodge be recognised from the
moment of its creation, rather than after a
delay, even if this is only a matter of a few
weeks. A resolution to recommend that
recognition of the new Grand Lodge,
conditional upon its being constituted, be
granted prospectively and that, subject to
the fulfilment of that condition, any English
Lodge in Malta that elects to participate in
the formation of the new Grand Lodge be
erased from the register of this Grand Lodge,
was approved.
Report of Library and Museum Trust
The Board has received a report from the
Library and Museum Charitable Trust
(see page 52).
New Warrants
List of New Lodges for which warrants have
been granted by the MW The Grand Master
showing the date from which their warrants
became effective:
Date of Warrant
No & Name of Lodge, Location, Area
29 April 2004
9787 Middlesex Masters, Harrow, Kenton, Middlesex
9788 Upminster Daylight, Upminster, Essex
9 June 2004
9789 The Friends’, Surbiton, Surrey
9790 Wakering and Barling, Rochford, Essex
9791 Light of Siam, Phuket, Eastern Archipelago
Appointments
The MW The Grand Master has made the
following appointments:
W Bro Dennis Neville Hayden PAGDC
to be District Grand Master for, and Grand
Superintendent in and over, Orange Free
State, in succession to RW Bro Benjamin
van Rensburg, who died on 22 May.
W Bro John George Kane PSGD to
be District Grand Master for, and Grand
Superintendent in and over, Zimbabwe,
in succession to RW Bro Leon Rivers,
who retired on 31 August.
W Bro Gareth Lloyd-Jones PSGD to
be Provincial Grand Master for, and Grand
Superintendent in and over, North Wales,
in succession to RW Bro Ian Mackeson-
Sandbach, who retired on 28 September.
Presentation from Professor Andrew
Prescott: The Centre for Research
and Freemasonry at the University
of Sheffield.
Professor Prescott said the Centre for
Research into Freemasonry was the first
centre (publicly launched in 2001) devoted
wholly to the study of Freemasonry to
be established in a British university.
Funding for the first three years was
provided by the UGLE, Yorkshire West
Riding Province and the Pro Grand Master
and, since last year, Supreme Grand Chapter.
The Centre organises bi-annual
18-20 November, it is being organised with
the Society for the Study of Labour History,
with the theme Freemasonry in Radical and
Social Movements.
The Centre has three postgraduate
students working on M. Phil degrees
(hopefully to be upgraded to Ph. D).
Recently two studentships were established
which will pay the fees of two postgraduate
students, funded by the Regular Grand
Lodge of Italy and Freemasonry Today.
Professor Prescott said he spent
much time at the Library and Museum
of Freemasonry exploring membership
records, which had provided interesting
information.
For instance, it was thought that the
earliest appearance of the word “Freemason”
in English was 1376, but he had found a
much earlier use of the word dating from
1325. This described the role of one Nicholas
le Freemason in a prison escape!
Nobody had previously read the
1799 Act which required the registration
of Masonic Lodges, particularly the dramatic
speech of the Duke of Atholl, which
effectively saved English Freemasonry
from being outlawed.
He had made more than 60 talks and
presentations, and he was now putting
them together into a book to be entitled
Tales From Great Queen Street.
The Internet was also being used and the
Centre’s site included an introductory
bibliography of the history of Freemasonry.
With the Library and Museum of
Freemasonry, John Lane’s remarkable
directory Masonic Records 1717–1894
was available in a database. Lane’s work
was to be updated, and applications had
been submitted to academic funding bodies
for this work. A CD had been published
of William Preston’s Illustrations of Masonry,
which allow different editions of this famous
work to be easily compared.
Plans to 2009 include working with
Sheffield University’s History Department
to develop an MA in Historical Research
with special modules on the history
of Freemasonry.
This would be the first course of its sort
in the world, and if it goes well, will be
launched next October. Initially it will be
available only to students based in Sheffield,
but eventually made available to others using
the Internet and other tools. They would
also be developing a course on Writing a
Lodge History. It was planned to launch the
first of these courses next year.
At the end of 2005, the Humanities
Research Institute, in which the Centre is
based, would move to new premises at the
heart of the University’s expanded campus.
They hoped to secure a major benefaction
for the Centre.
The new premises would include a
purpose-built extension incorporating a
lecture theatre, seminar room, library for
the rapidly expanding collection of Masonic
books, and space forvisiting scholars.
The extension would be called “Knoop
Centre” in honour of Douglas Knoop,
a former economics professor at the
university and a PM of Quatuor Coronati
Lodge, who in the 1940s published some of
the most influential studies of Freemasonry.
Finally, he hoped that the 300th
anniversary of Grand Lodge in 2017 would
see a tercentenary history of Grand Lodge.
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Copyright 2002-2007
MQ Magazine
Web site created by Mark Griffin
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