As one of the oldest social and charitable organisations in the world, we have a thriving community of approximately 175,000 members throughout England and Wales, as well as Districts overseas. Freemasons use four key values to help define their path through life: Integrity, Friendship, Respect, and Charity.
Learn MoreFreemasonry evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. With the decline of cathedral building, some lodges of operative (working) masons began to accept honorary members to bolster their declining membership. From a few of these lodges developed modern symbolic or speculative Freemasonry, which particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries adopted the rites and trappings of ancient religious orders and of chivalric brotherhoods. In 1717 the first Grand Lodge, an association of lodges, was founded in England.
Learn MoreThe Grand Lodge of England was established in 1717 and within a decade Freemasonry had grown to become the largest secular club or society in Britain. It remained so for the following centuries. Freemasonry's appeal was based on many factors but perhaps one of the most important was the publication of the '1723 Constitutions'.
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