{"id":11,"date":"2024-05-02T16:22:46","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T16:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:25:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:25:51","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Story: A History of Ulster Lodge No. 2972"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

OUR STORY \u00b7 1903 TO TODAY<\/p>\n

The story of Ulster Lodge No. 2972<\/h1>\n

A home in London for Irish Freemasons from Ulster, built by men who stayed, served and passed the Lodge on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

A home for men from Ulster<\/h2>\n

Ulster Lodge began with a simple idea: men from Ulster who had made their lives in London wanted a Masonic home of their own.<\/p>\n

The idea grew from the Ulster Association in London. Lodge tradition, preserved in the 1953 Jubilee history, remembers a summer excursion on the Thames when John B. Crowe suggested forming an Ulster Lodge. Contemporary reports later stated that Samuel McKee Barry had founded the Ulster Association and that Ulster Lodge grew from it.<\/p>\n

That context matters. In 1903, Northern Ireland did not yet exist. Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, and the men who created the Lodge were Irish Freemasons connected with the historic province of Ulster. Their own records called them “Ulstermen”. The political map changed profoundly during the Lodge’s early decades. The Lodge remained.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

13 November 1903<\/h3>\n

Ulster Lodge No. 2972 was consecrated at the Hotel Cecil on the Strand, sponsored by Commercial Travellers Lodge No. 2795 and Lodge of Erin No. 2895.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The men at the beginning<\/h2>\n

A. E. W. M’Camley became the first Worshipful Master. Around him stood men whose names recur again and again in the surviving records: John B. Crowe, Thomas Dunwoody, Dr Hugh Knox, Crawford Hillis, R. A. McQuitty and others.<\/p>\n

The original officer body also included doctors, clergy, businessmen, an architect, military men and Dr John Smyth Crone, who would become a notable figure in Irish literary life in London. The early Lodge was not built around one famous personality. It was built by a group of men who kept turning up, taking office and doing the work.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

A THEME THAT RUNS THROUGH THE RECORDS<\/p>\n

Ulster Lodge was built by men who stayed.<\/h3>\n

Crowe, Dunwoody, Knox, Hillis and their contemporaries continued serving long after the excitement of consecration had passed. Their continuity gave the Lodge its character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Meet the men at the beginning of Ulster Lodge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A bridge between two Masonic worlds<\/h2>\n

Ulster Lodge worked under the United Grand Lodge of England, but its Irish connections were never decorative. Visitors came from lodges under the Irish Constitution, and members maintained ties with lodges in Belfast and elsewhere in Ireland.<\/p>\n

One early installation was attended by brethren from True Blue Lodge No. 272 in Belfast, described as members of the Worshipful Master’s old Belfast lodge. Later meetings drew senior Masons from both England and Ireland. Ulster Lodge became a genuine meeting point between London Masonry and Irish Masonry.<\/p>\n

The ritual mattered too. Contemporary reports repeatedly praised the standard of the Lodge’s work. The early brethren wanted Ulster Lodge to be known not simply for where its members came from, but for the quality of its Masonry.<\/p>\n

War changed the Lodge<\/h2>\n

The First World War reached directly into the membership. Thomas Alexander Walsh Crozier, from Banbridge, served first as an ordinary soldier and later as an officer. He was awarded the Military Cross and was killed in France in March 1918. A letter from him had been read in open Lodge while he was serving overseas.<\/p>\n

Dr Edward Andrew Gregg, another Ulster Lodge brother, served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He later became Mayor of St Pancras and Chairman of the Council of the British Medical Association. His life is one example of how Lodge history opens into a much wider history of Ulster people in London.<\/p>\n

Read the story of Dr Edward Andrew Gregg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Hall Stone Lodge<\/h2>\n

After the First World War, the Masonic Million Memorial Fund was created to build a memorial to Freemasons who had died on active service. The Lodge’s Jubilee account records that Ulster Lodge subscribed \u00a3777. Its contribution earned Hall Stone status, an honour still carried by the Lodge.<\/p>\n

That post-war period also helped shape the Lodge’s permanent home. Sir Robert McCall, a senior lawyer, Past Master and Grand Officer, is remembered as helping the Lodge secure its position at Great Queen Street by changing its meeting arrangements before the new Freemasons’ Hall opened in 1933.<\/p>\n

Read how Ulster Lodge secured its place at Freemasons’ Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Lodge survived the Blitz<\/h2>\n

The Second World War produced some of the Lodge’s best-known stories. When evening meetings at Freemasons’ Hall became impractical during the Blitz, the brethren met in the morning. The Jubilee history remembers ceremonies continuing to the sound of anti-aircraft guns and, on one occasion, a flying bomb passing overhead before exploding nearby.<\/p>\n

The war also caused a permanent loss. Records covering the Lodge’s first thirty-eight years were destroyed during the great raid on the City of London on 10 May 1941. That is why later histories, newspapers, membership registers and surviving personal records are so important to the work now being done on this website.<\/p>\n

Read how the Blitz destroyed the early Lodge records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What did “Ulster” mean?<\/h2>\n

The answer has never been as simple as a modern label. The founders lived before partition. They belonged to a generation in which a man could be strongly attached to Ulster while also thinking of himself as Irish. Later generations inherited a name whose political and cultural associations had changed around them.<\/p>\n

We therefore use the language of the period carefully. “Ulstermen” is important because it is the word the Lodge and contemporary sources used. But our history is about real individuals, not assumptions. We do not infer a man’s religion or politics from his surname, birthplace or Lodge membership. Where those things can be established, they are recorded from evidence.<\/p>\n

The surviving by-laws also show that the Lodge’s membership rules changed. The Jubilee account records an early qualification based on Ulster birth, descent or connection, later tightened to preserve the Lodge’s Ulster character. In the modern Lodge, Ulster remains our heritage rather than a barrier to membership.<\/p>\n

The people matter most<\/h2>\n

Some Ulster Lodge members became important lawyers, doctors, industrialists, soldiers, newspaper proprietors and public figures. Others never became famous outside their profession or family. Both belong in the story.<\/p>\n

The most revealing history is often found in the ordinary record: who proposed whom, which men travelled from Belfast, which brothers served together for decades, who wrote from the Front, who kept the Lodge of Instruction going, who organised dinner, who returned year after year and who brought the next generation in.<\/p>\n

That is why this website is becoming more than a chronology. We are rebuilding the collective biography of the Lodge, one brother at a time.<\/p>\n

Ulster Lodge remains<\/h2>\n

The Hotel Cecil is gone. The London Ulster Association from which the Lodge emerged appears to have faded from organised life. The men who founded the Lodge are long gone. The political map of Ireland is different from the one they knew.<\/p>\n

Ulster Lodge remains.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We still meet at Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street. We still work the ritual, dine together, welcome visitors and pass responsibility from one generation of brethren to the next. More than 120 years after that first idea in London, the Lodge continues to be shaped by friendship, service, memory and its connection with Ulster.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Explore the Lodge archive<\/h2>\n

Read the biographies, documents and stories now being recovered from more than a century of Ulster Lodge history.<\/p>\n

Browse Research & Articles<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OUR STORY \u00b7 1903 TO TODAY The story of Ulster Lodge No. 2972 A home in London for Irish Freemasons from Ulster, built by men who stayed, served and passed the Lodge on. A home for men from Ulster Ulster Lodge began with a simple idea: men from Ulster who had made their lives in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ulsterlodge.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}