St.George's Lodge No.3, GLNF
History of St.George's No.3, GLNF
St. George's No.3 : History
A shorty history of the early years of the Lodge
It was front-page news. The weekly magazine The Freemason, in its issue dated Saturday July 11, 1914, "A new English Lodge in Paris". It was a report on the consecration of St. George's No.3, Paris, which had taken place on Saturday 20th June, an event considered by the United Grand Lodge of England as "an undertaking of undue importance".
"It has been a matter of regret," the article in The Freemason went on, "There was no masonic lodges in the United Kingdom. disadvantage when any of its members traveled to France, as a regular practice had been entrusted to the end of the 19th century until the creation in 1913 of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge by two already established Lodges, the Center des Friends (founded 1793) and The Englishwoman of Bordeaux (founded 1732).
Once again, the Lodges had broken away from their previous "guardianship" to form the new Grand Lodge, clearly the most important next step to the new Grand Lodge to be found as many Lodges as possible, so that the new Grand Lodge could begin to exist opposite its enormous, but irregular competitors. But it seems that St. George's Lodge was not created as a result of an initiative on the part of the National Independent and Regular Grand Lodge to found Lodges and recruit new initiates.
The earliest suggestion on record that Paris needed a regular, English-speaking Lodge dates back to a summer's evening in 1913 in the Hotel du Louvre. A number of English friends had gathered there for a whiskey and soda or two in the bar, when the conversation turned to freemasonry. As the conversation developed, they realized that they were almost all under the UGLE, but that, sadly, they were unable to practice masonry in France. W.Bro. Douglas Nicholson, later to become the first Junior Warden of St. George's, takes the story: "Then someone said 'there is enough to start a Lodge'. I was asked if I would become a founder, and I agreed. It seems [we] have never looked back since! "
Three of the Brethren present that evening at the meeting of the Lodge in Paris: Bro. Douglas Nicholson, W.Bro. Arthur Cawdron of Lodge of Friendship no. 206, and W.Bro. Gilroy Carter of Lodge no. 23, Scottish Constitution. The first thing to do to write to the Grand Secretary in London, which they did on October 27, 1913. Unfortunately there was no reply, so we found the Brethren wrote back on March 17, 1914, the UGLE, in December 1913, of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge. During the previous autumn, discussions with the founders of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge must have been well under way.
Brethren of St. George's and the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge. How could there have been, as the Founding Brethren did not know of its existence. So what had the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge been doing since securing recognition in December 1913? Its first priority seems to have been set to a provincial Grand Lodge within which to accommodate the Center of Friends and the English of Bordeaux. The first Provincial Grand Master of Neustria, as the new Province was called, was W.Bro. Hubert de Mondehare, Past Master of Two Lodges in England, France no. 2060 and The Entente Cordiale no. 2796. Fortunately for St. George's, a number of prominent Grand Lodge Officers from London came over for the Consecration of the New Provincial Grand Lodge, among them W.Bro. Edward Roehrich, CEO, W.Bro. Charles Quicke, PAGSupt.Wks, W.Bro. HC de Lafontaine, PGD and W.Bro. Collar. HW Morrieson, CEO.
Taking advantage of their presence in Paris, Grand Lodge Officers and the founders of St. George's. One of the earliest decisions it should be ascertained whether Anglo-Saxon lodge wished to join the new Grand Lodge, in which case it should rightfully have senior status as no. 3. This was declined, of course Anglo-Saxon later moved to the GLNF no. 103. Preparations then went ahead for the Consecration of St. George's, as no. 3, and therefore the first Lodge to be consecrated by the new Grand Lodge. The date set for this occasion was Saturday, June 20, 1914.
So who was going to do what? First, as Provincial Grand Master of Neustrie, it fell to W.Bro. de Mondehare to open the proceedings, and later to act as IPM for the Installation ceremony. The WM designate was the Pr.J.G.W. of Neustrie, W.Bro. Edmund Heisch, a PM of two prestigious English Lodges, Universal no. 181 and Shakespeare no. 99, and a Past Grand Steward. The consecration was carried out in English by W.Bro. Charles Quicke, who also read out letters of congratulation and encouragement from the Pro Grand Master, the Grand Secretary and the President of the Board of General Purposes of the UGLE.
It fell to the Consecrating Chaplain to comment on the choice of name of the new Lodge. “As the Lodge is composed of Englishmen sojourning in a foreign land, so it is well that by the name of the Lodge, homeland longings and true patriotic sentiments should be stirred and kept alive by the memory of their patron saint.” He went on to recount the legend of St. George, a young nobleman from Cappodocia who converted to Christianity and, according to legend, killed a dragon which had an annoying habit of consuming innocent young maidens, the legend symbolizing, according to W.Bro. Lafontaine, the struggle between good and evil.
After the consecration W.Bro. Roehrich took the chair and installed W.Bro. Heisch as the first WM of St. George’s Lodge. No sooner was he in the Chair with his Officers duly invested than he got down to business, appointing a Committee to frame the Lodge’s by-laws, and proposing that the Pro Grand Master of England, Lord Ampthill, be invited to become the first Honorary Member of the Lodge (carried unanimously). Ten applications for initiation and one application for Joining Membership were then read.
In the following weeks and months, and despite the outbreak of war, St. George’s embarked upon a vigorous programme of initiations, passings and raisings, in many cases holding a meeting every week. In those days Regular Meetings were held on 3rd Fridays from October to March, December excluded, with the Installation Meeting being held on the Saturday following St. George’s Day, 23 April. The only change that has ever been made to that schedule (apart from closure under the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1946) has been to substitute 3rd Fridays for 3rd Saturdays, and to redefine the Installation Meeting as falling on the nearest Friday to St. George’s Day, in an attempt to avoid the May 1st holiday – a constraint which did not arise in the first 22 years of the Lodge’s existence! So most of those early meetings were Emergency Meetings, with the result that for a Lodge scheduled to hold six Regular Meetings a year, St. George’s had met 17 times by the end of 1915, and the Installation Meeting of 27 April 1918 was its 60th meeting in five years of existence.
Although the early summonses were simple typewritten affairs, the square St. George’s Lodge logo which is still in use today made its first appearance in the summons for the 12th meeting, on 16 October 1915. The 14th meeting, on 20 November 1915, was marked by a letter from M.W.Bro. de Ribaucourt, the Grand Master, to commemorate two years of recognition of the Grande Loge Nationale by the UGLE. But otherwise, the Minute Book for those early years makes little mention of special anniversaries, although I did note the visit of a small delegation from St. George’s and Cornerstone Lodge no. 5 on the occasion of no. 3’s 20th meeting on 22 January 1916.
For the first two and a half years of the existence of St. George’s, the Lodge held a monopoly of working in the English language. Indeed, there was little activity in the Grand Loge Nationale outside St. George’s, which was initiating, passing and raising candidates as fast as it could go, while the Grand Lodge and the Provincial Grand Lodge of Neustrie which supervised nos. 1 and 2. And even the founding Lodges were having their difficulties – at the 49th meeting of St. George’s, on 17 November 1917, the WM of Le Centre des Amis visited the Lodge and made a point of appealing for support for his Lodge by the by then very numerous members of St. George’s.
Curiously, although the very future of the Grand Loge Nationale depended on founding new Lodges and getting new members in, only one further Lodge, no. 4, was founded in that two and a half year period. But at last, on 15 December 1916, Lodge no. 5 was consecrated in Rouen, under the name Jeanne d’Arc. Other English-speaking Lodges were to follow – most notably, in the Paris area, Britannic no. 9, consecrated in February 1918, Fidelity no. 10 consecrated on 4 December 1920 and St. George’s own Daughter Lodge Georgian no. 11 , on 12 March 1921, founded because St. George’s membership had hit its self-imposed ceiling of 50 subscribing members.
Although Joint Meetings were not yet a feature of English-speaking masonry in Paris, a joint English-speaking Lodge of Instruction was set up in October 1921. And in June 1927, the first Royal Arch Chapter to be consecrated under the Grande Loge Nationale was St. George’s Chapter, with its first-ever WM, W.Bro. Edmund Heisch, returning to be First Principal.
Not surprisingly, St. George’s was a source of several Grand Officers and Provincial Grand Officers, beginning with W.Bro. Douglas Warne who became Grand Secretary in 1916, W.Bro. Norfolk Dane who became Grand Secretary in 1920, and R.W.Bro. Hubert de Mondehare, who became Grand Master in 1929, and many others. In later years, the Lodge’s 58th Joining Member was one Bro. Cyril Batham of Jerusalem Lodge no. 686 (on 18 February 1966), just two before W.Bro. Francis Bartels from Gold Coast Lodge no. 773 on 17 April 1968, and its 117th initiate, on 16 January 1948, one Bro. Stanley Julian Leon Humbert cannot be said to have passed unknown in French regular masonry.
In the early years dining funds and the Festive Board were serious subjects at St. George’s. Early Installation Banquets took place at Garnier’s restaurant at 4, rue de L’Isly (a long cab ride from 282 rue St. Jacques!) In 1919, the dining fee was 7 francs for members and 12 francs for visitors! By way of comparison, the annual subscription was 75 francs. By 1920 the dining fee was 12 francs for everyone, and Festive Boards usually took place at “A la chope du Carrefour”, 1, rue de Maubeuge, a short walk from the temple at 42, rue de Rochechouart. Installation banquets were understandably more expensive, the price reaching 60 francs in 1921, but these were inflationary times: the price of the Festive Board at the following meeting, in October, had gone up to 25 francs. (Just as a guide, a franc in 1919 was worth about a euro in 2018).
To conclude, St. George’s Lodge no.3 not only gave English masons in Paris a Regular Lodge where they could practice freemasonry in English, it got the new Grande Loge Nationale off to a strong start. Indeed, if the impetus to found St. George’s had not come from those English masons propping up the bar at the Hôtel du Louvre in the summer of 1913, the new Grande Loge would probably have either moved at the slow, gentle pace it adopted outside St. George’s from 1913 to 1916… or it might never have got off the ground at all. In pre-war France, if you were tempted to become a mason, the obvious places to go were the Grand Orient or the Grande Loge de France. Fortunately for St. George’s, for regular masonry in France and for English-speaking masonry in Paris, it did get off the ground. And as W.Bro. de Mondehare said in an an impassioned address at the Consecration of the Lodge back in June 1914, St. George’s marked “the union for ever cemented of these Grand Lodges of France and England”, in an historic meeting that " would tomorrow make its mark throughout the world.”
"It has been a matter of regret," the article in The Freemason went on, "There was no masonic lodges in the United Kingdom. disadvantage when any of its members traveled to France, as a regular practice had been entrusted to the end of the 19th century until the creation in 1913 of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge by two already established Lodges, the Center des Friends (founded 1793) and The Englishwoman of Bordeaux (founded 1732).
Once again, the Lodges had broken away from their previous "guardianship" to form the new Grand Lodge, clearly the most important next step to the new Grand Lodge to be found as many Lodges as possible, so that the new Grand Lodge could begin to exist opposite its enormous, but irregular competitors. But it seems that St. George's Lodge was not created as a result of an initiative on the part of the National Independent and Regular Grand Lodge to found Lodges and recruit new initiates.
The earliest suggestion on record that Paris needed a regular, English-speaking Lodge dates back to a summer's evening in 1913 in the Hotel du Louvre. A number of English friends had gathered there for a whiskey and soda or two in the bar, when the conversation turned to freemasonry. As the conversation developed, they realized that they were almost all under the UGLE, but that, sadly, they were unable to practice masonry in France. W.Bro. Douglas Nicholson, later to become the first Junior Warden of St. George's, takes the story: "Then someone said 'there is enough to start a Lodge'. I was asked if I would become a founder, and I agreed. It seems [we] have never looked back since! "
Three of the Brethren present that evening at the meeting of the Lodge in Paris: Bro. Douglas Nicholson, W.Bro. Arthur Cawdron of Lodge of Friendship no. 206, and W.Bro. Gilroy Carter of Lodge no. 23, Scottish Constitution. The first thing to do to write to the Grand Secretary in London, which they did on October 27, 1913. Unfortunately there was no reply, so we found the Brethren wrote back on March 17, 1914, the UGLE, in December 1913, of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge. During the previous autumn, discussions with the founders of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge must have been well under way.
Brethren of St. George's and the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge. How could there have been, as the Founding Brethren did not know of its existence. So what had the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge been doing since securing recognition in December 1913? Its first priority seems to have been set to a provincial Grand Lodge within which to accommodate the Center of Friends and the English of Bordeaux. The first Provincial Grand Master of Neustria, as the new Province was called, was W.Bro. Hubert de Mondehare, Past Master of Two Lodges in England, France no. 2060 and The Entente Cordiale no. 2796. Fortunately for St. George's, a number of prominent Grand Lodge Officers from London came over for the Consecration of the New Provincial Grand Lodge, among them W.Bro. Edward Roehrich, CEO, W.Bro. Charles Quicke, PAGSupt.Wks, W.Bro. HC de Lafontaine, PGD and W.Bro. Collar. HW Morrieson, CEO.
Taking advantage of their presence in Paris, Grand Lodge Officers and the founders of St. George's. One of the earliest decisions it should be ascertained whether Anglo-Saxon lodge wished to join the new Grand Lodge, in which case it should rightfully have senior status as no. 3. This was declined, of course Anglo-Saxon later moved to the GLNF no. 103. Preparations then went ahead for the Consecration of St. George's, as no. 3, and therefore the first Lodge to be consecrated by the new Grand Lodge. The date set for this occasion was Saturday, June 20, 1914.
So who was going to do what? First, as Provincial Grand Master of Neustrie, it fell to W.Bro. de Mondehare to open the proceedings, and later to act as IPM for the Installation ceremony. The WM designate was the Pr.J.G.W. of Neustrie, W.Bro. Edmund Heisch, a PM of two prestigious English Lodges, Universal no. 181 and Shakespeare no. 99, and a Past Grand Steward. The consecration was carried out in English by W.Bro. Charles Quicke, who also read out letters of congratulation and encouragement from the Pro Grand Master, the Grand Secretary and the President of the Board of General Purposes of the UGLE.
It fell to the Consecrating Chaplain to comment on the choice of name of the new Lodge. “As the Lodge is composed of Englishmen sojourning in a foreign land, so it is well that by the name of the Lodge, homeland longings and true patriotic sentiments should be stirred and kept alive by the memory of their patron saint.” He went on to recount the legend of St. George, a young nobleman from Cappodocia who converted to Christianity and, according to legend, killed a dragon which had an annoying habit of consuming innocent young maidens, the legend symbolizing, according to W.Bro. Lafontaine, the struggle between good and evil.
After the consecration W.Bro. Roehrich took the chair and installed W.Bro. Heisch as the first WM of St. George’s Lodge. No sooner was he in the Chair with his Officers duly invested than he got down to business, appointing a Committee to frame the Lodge’s by-laws, and proposing that the Pro Grand Master of England, Lord Ampthill, be invited to become the first Honorary Member of the Lodge (carried unanimously). Ten applications for initiation and one application for Joining Membership were then read.
In the following weeks and months, and despite the outbreak of war, St. George’s embarked upon a vigorous programme of initiations, passings and raisings, in many cases holding a meeting every week. In those days Regular Meetings were held on 3rd Fridays from October to March, December excluded, with the Installation Meeting being held on the Saturday following St. George’s Day, 23 April. The only change that has ever been made to that schedule (apart from closure under the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1946) has been to substitute 3rd Fridays for 3rd Saturdays, and to redefine the Installation Meeting as falling on the nearest Friday to St. George’s Day, in an attempt to avoid the May 1st holiday – a constraint which did not arise in the first 22 years of the Lodge’s existence! So most of those early meetings were Emergency Meetings, with the result that for a Lodge scheduled to hold six Regular Meetings a year, St. George’s had met 17 times by the end of 1915, and the Installation Meeting of 27 April 1918 was its 60th meeting in five years of existence.
Although the early summonses were simple typewritten affairs, the square St. George’s Lodge logo which is still in use today made its first appearance in the summons for the 12th meeting, on 16 October 1915. The 14th meeting, on 20 November 1915, was marked by a letter from M.W.Bro. de Ribaucourt, the Grand Master, to commemorate two years of recognition of the Grande Loge Nationale by the UGLE. But otherwise, the Minute Book for those early years makes little mention of special anniversaries, although I did note the visit of a small delegation from St. George’s and Cornerstone Lodge no. 5 on the occasion of no. 3’s 20th meeting on 22 January 1916.
For the first two and a half years of the existence of St. George’s, the Lodge held a monopoly of working in the English language. Indeed, there was little activity in the Grand Loge Nationale outside St. George’s, which was initiating, passing and raising candidates as fast as it could go, while the Grand Lodge and the Provincial Grand Lodge of Neustrie which supervised nos. 1 and 2. And even the founding Lodges were having their difficulties – at the 49th meeting of St. George’s, on 17 November 1917, the WM of Le Centre des Amis visited the Lodge and made a point of appealing for support for his Lodge by the by then very numerous members of St. George’s.
Curiously, although the very future of the Grand Loge Nationale depended on founding new Lodges and getting new members in, only one further Lodge, no. 4, was founded in that two and a half year period. But at last, on 15 December 1916, Lodge no. 5 was consecrated in Rouen, under the name Jeanne d’Arc. Other English-speaking Lodges were to follow – most notably, in the Paris area, Britannic no. 9, consecrated in February 1918, Fidelity no. 10 consecrated on 4 December 1920 and St. George’s own Daughter Lodge Georgian no. 11 , on 12 March 1921, founded because St. George’s membership had hit its self-imposed ceiling of 50 subscribing members.
Although Joint Meetings were not yet a feature of English-speaking masonry in Paris, a joint English-speaking Lodge of Instruction was set up in October 1921. And in June 1927, the first Royal Arch Chapter to be consecrated under the Grande Loge Nationale was St. George’s Chapter, with its first-ever WM, W.Bro. Edmund Heisch, returning to be First Principal.
Not surprisingly, St. George’s was a source of several Grand Officers and Provincial Grand Officers, beginning with W.Bro. Douglas Warne who became Grand Secretary in 1916, W.Bro. Norfolk Dane who became Grand Secretary in 1920, and R.W.Bro. Hubert de Mondehare, who became Grand Master in 1929, and many others. In later years, the Lodge’s 58th Joining Member was one Bro. Cyril Batham of Jerusalem Lodge no. 686 (on 18 February 1966), just two before W.Bro. Francis Bartels from Gold Coast Lodge no. 773 on 17 April 1968, and its 117th initiate, on 16 January 1948, one Bro. Stanley Julian Leon Humbert cannot be said to have passed unknown in French regular masonry.
In the early years dining funds and the Festive Board were serious subjects at St. George’s. Early Installation Banquets took place at Garnier’s restaurant at 4, rue de L’Isly (a long cab ride from 282 rue St. Jacques!) In 1919, the dining fee was 7 francs for members and 12 francs for visitors! By way of comparison, the annual subscription was 75 francs. By 1920 the dining fee was 12 francs for everyone, and Festive Boards usually took place at “A la chope du Carrefour”, 1, rue de Maubeuge, a short walk from the temple at 42, rue de Rochechouart. Installation banquets were understandably more expensive, the price reaching 60 francs in 1921, but these were inflationary times: the price of the Festive Board at the following meeting, in October, had gone up to 25 francs. (Just as a guide, a franc in 1919 was worth about a euro in 2018).
To conclude, St. George’s Lodge no.3 not only gave English masons in Paris a Regular Lodge where they could practice freemasonry in English, it got the new Grande Loge Nationale off to a strong start. Indeed, if the impetus to found St. George’s had not come from those English masons propping up the bar at the Hôtel du Louvre in the summer of 1913, the new Grande Loge would probably have either moved at the slow, gentle pace it adopted outside St. George’s from 1913 to 1916… or it might never have got off the ground at all. In pre-war France, if you were tempted to become a mason, the obvious places to go were the Grand Orient or the Grande Loge de France. Fortunately for St. George’s, for regular masonry in France and for English-speaking masonry in Paris, it did get off the ground. And as W.Bro. de Mondehare said in an an impassioned address at the Consecration of the Lodge back in June 1914, St. George’s marked “the union for ever cemented of these Grand Lodges of France and England”, in an historic meeting that " would tomorrow make its mark throughout the world.”