After several years of serious subjects and fine art the summer show for the Library and Museum at Freemasons’ Hall this year turns to the more social side of masonry by featuring three hundred years of Masonic dining and celebration. One of the earliest entries in the first minute book of the Ancients Grand Lodge alleges that masons are being made for the fee of a ‘leg of mutton’ and, as one of the reasons for forming Grand Lodge was to hold an Annual Feast, it is certain that the sociable side of masonry is as old as the ritual ceremonies.
     The festive board is now so much a part of freemasonry that it is hard to remember that it took nearly a hundred years to arrive, early lodges meeting around tables in pubs and inns, with the ritual and ceremony punctuated by food and drink. It was only after 1813 when the Ancients and Moderns Grand Lodges amalgamated that the lodge room for purpose built ritual caused the meal to become a separate event. Early ‘table’ lodges had complete rituals based around the items on the meal table and “Masonic fire” is a survival of this. Early lodges were often named after the pubs they met in and even the first Grand Lodge began in the Goose and Gridiron tavern. The Freemasons’ Tavern attached to Freemasons’ Hall in London was a major venue in its day and a cookbook published by its owner John Mollard and recently acquired by the Library and Museum will be on show along with ceramics and cutlery, all displayed on the last table to survive from the tavern.
     Some of the most famous ceremonial meals in freemasonry are the feasts of the Grand Stewards held in honour of the Grand Master, but did you know that there were briefly Country Stewards honouring the Deputy Grand Master and feasting deep in the country – at Islington! Festival meals for the charities were major social occasions and elaborate embroidered badges were worn by the stewards, forerunners of the metal steward jewels for the charities. The largest of these meals was held in support of the Masonic Million Fund and seven thousand masons enjoyed probably the largest sit down lunch ever held in this country.
     The partners and friends of masons were not excluded for long, even if certain elements of the meal like fire and the masonic toasts were omitted. One of the earliest minuted records of an annual lodge ball is found in the minutes of All Souls Lodge: it reads
     ‘order’d the celebrated of St. Johns day be held Thursday next when it was agreed to treat the Sisters with a Tea, a Dance & Supper, that the Brethren do attend to Invest and Install at 4 O’Clock that Tea be ready at half past 5 O’Clock, that supper be on tables at 9 O’Clock” The ball was held on 20 December 1792 in Tiverton, Devonshire, where the Lodge met.
     From this modest start and others like it grew the Ladies Nights and White Tables of the present. Up to the end of the 1800s these events were often in the presence of masons in regalia but Grand Lodge ruled against this late in the century, thus removing colourful spectacles such as ladies dancing under arches formed from the upheld swords of masonic Knights Templar.
     Commercial manufacturers took advantage of this masonic love of dining by producing everything from cordials to mineral water and even fish paste with masonic themes and masons themselves bought or made everyday objects with masonic decoration including jelly moulds and cream skimmers. It is a reminder of freemasonry as a part of life outside the lodge and very visible in the wider world.
     In addition to this history the exhibition will also look at some of the wonderful silver table ornaments made and presented to masons including the candelabrum presented to Dr Crucefix, which combines a figure of charity with the jewels of his various ranks and even an old man with his loyal dog to represent the work of the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution which was Crucefix’s creation.
     The story of the loving cup will be told and a range of cups will be on display to tell the very different histories of their lodges.
     Not every cup was silver, Somersetshire Lodge No. 2925 had a ceramic cider cup and even coconut shells were pressed into service on occasion.
     Drinking of punch was also popular and possibly the largest punchbowl ever made from Chinese porcelain will be on show along with the ferocious recipe for the punch that was drunk from it. Some of the finest workmanship to grace a lodge table will be represented with fine engraved and enameled glass and porcelain but the more everyday will not be forgotten either nor indeed the slightly more bizarre with masonic themed butter dish, jelly mould and toastrack. Early pieces of continental ceramics including a soup tureen featuring the degrees from the Ancient and Accepted rite are a reminder that dining did not only happen in the UK, in Germany firing glasses were termed ‘cannon glasses’ which may suggest a more violent form of fire, judge for yourself by contrasting the style of glasses from English lodges and those on the continent.
     Menus and bills from meals of the last two centuries will give an insight into the eating and drinking habits of members, which would certainly not pass the current guidance on healthy eating and the now extinct custom of smoking after the Royal toast will also be commemorated. If Rudyard Kipling is to be believed, smoking replaced meals where so many castes and religions were present that dining was impossible, as he famously said in the poem My Mother Lodge “We dursn’t have a banquet lest a brother’s caste be broke” A substitute for the future perhaps is a revival of the custom of snuff taking and a range of snuff boxes and mulls will also be on display to complete the after dinner scene.

The exhibition starts on 7th July and will be open from 11-5 on weekdays until 26th September. Admission is free. Mark Dennis is the Curator of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry.