The day a flying bomb passed over Ulster Lodge

Ulster Lodge No. 2972 continued to meet throughout the Second World War, even when London was under sustained attack.

One incident recorded in the Lodge’s 1953 Jubilee Review captures the determination of its members better than almost anything else in the surviving history.

Meetings continued during the war

The Jubilee booklet says Ulster Lodge never abandoned a meeting during the war years. As bombing became more intense, Grand Lodge discouraged evening meetings at Freemasons’ Hall, so Ulster Lodge adapted by meeting at 11am instead.

That did not mean the danger had passed.

On one occasion, a flying bomb passed directly over Freemasons’ Hall while W. Bro. A. W. Bentley, the Worshipful Master, was administering an obligation to a candidate.

The ceremony continued.

The bomb exploded a short distance away and caused considerable damage in the surrounding area. Remarkably, the Jubilee Review records that not even a pane of glass was broken in Freemasons’ Hall.

The ceremony carried on

The most striking detail is not simply that the bomb passed overhead. It is that the ceremony was completed without interruption.

At the next meeting, W. Bro. Morrison read the Lodge an account of the incident from the minutes. By then the danger had passed and the brethren could look back on it with some amusement. The 1953 writer added that it had been “anything but funny at the time”.

A small story that says a great deal

Ulster Lodge had already lived through the First World War and would later discover that much of its earlier documentary history had been destroyed during the Blitz. Yet the Lodge itself continued.

The flying-bomb story is therefore more than a dramatic wartime anecdote. It is an example of the continuity that runs through the Lodge’s history: members adapting to circumstances, turning up and carrying on.

More than seventy years later, the Jubilee Review preserves the memory of a London Lodge meeting in wartime, a candidate taking part in his ceremony, and a V-weapon passing over the building above them.

Related reading

• How the Blitz destroyed Ulster Lodge’s early records
• Why Ulster Lodge is a Hall Stone Lodge
• How Ulster Lodge secured its place at Freemasons’ Hall

Source: Ulster Lodge No. 2972, A Jubilee Review, 1953.