The night the Pro Grand Master said the English Constitution would not be complete without Ulster Lodge

On 14 December 1928, Ulster Lodge No. 2972 marked its Semi-Jubilee with what its later history described as the largest gathering of Freemasons yet held under the Lodge’s auspices.

The event came twenty-five years after the Lodge had been consecrated at the Hotel Cecil and was held under the Mastership of W. Bro. Henry Lowry Spratt.

A contemporary 1928 report adds something more personal. Spratt said he had been born and bred in Ulster, had left Belfast early in life, travelled widely and eventually settled in London. By then, he said, one of his greatest interests in life centred on Ulster Lodge. The same report recalled that he and James Kirkland had been initiated into Freemasonry together about twelve years earlier.

The Lodge’s 1953 Jubilee Review looked back on that evening as one of the defining moments of its first half-century.

An exceptional gathering

Among those present was Lord Ampthill, then Pro Grand Master, together with a number of other Grand Officers. The Duke of Abercorn, Provincial Grand Master of Derry and Donegal, also attended, as did Sir Henry J. Forde, Provincial Grand Master of the South Eastern Counties of Ireland, and Field Marshal Sir Claud Jacob.

The booklet also names senior English and Irish Freemasons and several of the Lodge’s founders.

For a Lodge only twenty-five years old, it was a remarkable room.

Lord Ampthill’s tribute

Lord Ampthill congratulated the Worshipful Master on the manner in which the ceremony had been conducted. He then spoke about the Lodge itself and its place within English Freemasonry.

The Jubilee Review records him saying that Ulster Lodge had helped bring Ulstermen living in London closer to their friends in Ulster.

His strongest line was even more striking. He said that the English Constitution, “cosmopolitan as it is”, would not be complete without Ulster Lodge.

Whatever the formality of a Masonic speech, it was an extraordinary tribute to a Lodge that had begun only a generation earlier with a conversation among Ulstermen on a summer outing on the Thames.

Gifts to mark twenty-five years

The Semi-Jubilee was also marked by presentations to the Lodge. W. Bro. E. W. Evans presented a Master’s Collar and W. Bro. T. Dunwoody gave a loving cup. Dunwoody was unable to attend because of ill health.

These were tangible reminders of a Lodge that had moved beyond its founding years and established itself firmly within London Freemasonry.

From a Thames excursion to a major London Lodge

The founders could hardly have known in 1903 what the Lodge would become. By 1928 it could fill a major meeting with leading Freemasons from England and Ireland and receive an endorsement from the Pro Grand Master himself.

The Semi-Jubilee was not simply an anniversary. It was the moment Ulster Lodge could look back at its first twenty-five years and see that the experiment had worked.

Related reading

• How Ulster Lodge secured its place at Freemasons’ Hall
• Ulster Lodge and the Irish Masonic network in London
• The remarkable men connected with Ulster Lodge by 1953

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