THE HERTFORD LODGE, NO. 403
Reproduced from the programme for
the 175th Anniversary meeting
Could the
Freemasons who met in the Salisbury Arms Hotel in Hertford on the 8th
of September, 1829, to consecrate the Hertford Lodge, have possibly foreseen that their vision, “to discharge the duties of
Masonry in a Constitutional manner”, would outlast the succession and death of
Queen Victoria, the Crimean, Boer and two World Wars, the publication of
Darwin’s Origin of Species, the
discovery of atomic power, the coming and going of Concorde, man’s landing on
the moon and the technological revolution that has transformed the world in
which we live and work? And how
conscious are we that our early Masonic forbears in 403 experienced firsthand
the writings of Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, Hardy and Robert Louis
Stevenson, or the music of Chopin, Liszt, Wagner and Tchaikovsky?
There was no
lodge in Hertfordshire in 1829, so a group of members of the Grand Master’s
Lodge, No. 1, supported two of their brethren who lived in Ware, in the
petition to the Duke of Sussex, M.W. Grand Master, for the formation of a lodge
in the county town. Without delay His
Royal Highness issued a warrant, dated the 31st of August 1829, and
the Hertford Lodge was constituted. The
Consecration Meeting took place at the Salisbury Arms Hotel on the 8th of
September, under the direction of Bro. John Bott, PJGD.
Bro. Francis Crew, a bookseller of Lamb’s
Within a month,
Crew had written to the Duke of Sussex requesting a dispensation, “in
consideration of this being a new and most prosperous Lodge”, to initiate a
number of gentlemen, including the Most Noble The Marquess
of Salisbury of Hatfield House who in 1833 became Provincial Grand Master.
The lodge was
inundated with initiates and joining members, forty-seven in all in its
inaugural year, a great testament to the first Master, who earned wide acclaim
for the discharge of his duties. In the History of Freemasonry in Hertfordshire,
G. Blizzard Abbott notes that Bro. Crew:
will always be
remembered . . . as having the wisdom, tact, and geniality . . . as the first Master of its senior lodge
. . . to guide the destinies of Hertfordshire Masonry into the right path; and it is to the credit of the Hertford Lodge
that it has always shown its respect for his memory by the able and consistent
manner in which it has observed those principles which it was his delight as
well as his duty to instil in the minds of its earlier members.
Subsequent years
were equally fruitful: in 1870, the
Worshipful Master, who rejoiced in the name Dr Herbert Busy Hodges, oversaw the
joining of six brethren, and the initiation of no fewer than fifteen
candidates, amongst whom were Abel Smith and Baron Dimsdale.
The Lodge’s
records are littered with names that we recognize today, locally, historically
and masonically.
Among them are Farquhar, Stephen Austin, Wigginton,
Longmore, Keyser, (all Masters),
John
Norris,
Director
of Ceremonies
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