A
Short History of:
The
Lodge of Friendship No. 750
Petition
For Warrant
In early 1858, Fifteen brethren led by W. Bro. R.H. Goldthorpe, P.P.G.D.
petitioned the Most Worshipful the Grand Master of the United Fraternity of
Antient, Free and Accepted Masons of England for permission to form a new Lodge
to be named "The Lodge of Friendship"
Having the prosperity of the Craft at Heart, and to promote and diffuse
the genuine principles of the art, and for the convenience of our respective
dwellings and other good reasons, and praying for a Warrant of Constitution.
Of the signatories to the petition thirteen were members of Zetland Lodge,
then numbered 877. The petition was sponsored and recommended by six acting
Officers and Past Masters of Hope Lodge, No. 379 Bradford West Yorkshire.
The signatories to the Petition nominated W. Bro. Robert Heward Goldthorpe
as the first Master. Bro. Joseph Blacker Bennett as Senior Warden and Bro.
Ephraim Gibson as Junior Warden.
The Warrant of the Lodge was granted on the 2nd June 1858 by the then
Grand Master, R.W. Bro. The Earl of Zetland.
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Lodge Meetings
The first Regular Meeting of the Lodge of Friendship, then No. 1052 was
held at the Masonic Hall in the Railway Hotel, Railway Street, Cleckheaton, West
Yorkshire on Monday 26th July 1858, when twelve members were present.
At the first meeting it was decided that subsequent meetings should be
held on the Monday on or nearest to every full moon, and the Tyler was to
receive an annual remuneration of two guineas.
On Wednesday the 6th July 1859 an emergency meeting of the Lodge was
called for the purpose of holding the Quarterly Meeting of Provincial Grand
Lodge of West Yorkshire and for the Consecration and Dedication of the Lodge of
Friendship.
The arrangement to meet on a Monday continued until December 1860, when it
was unanimously decided that future meetings be held on the first Wednesday
after the full moon, the first Regular Lodge Meeting to be held on a Wednesday
was on February 27th 1861. This arrangement continues to this day
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Why
Meet on the Full Moon
As with many Lodges of that day, meetings were held on or around the full
moon in order to provide brethren with as much light as possible to travel to
and from their Lodge meetings.
(Street lighting was not a common facility until the early part of the
20th century).
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Re-Numbering
of the Lodge
On the 5th August 1863 the Lodge was re-numbered from 1052 to 750 on the
register of the Grand Lodge of England.
By 1874 the Lodge Room in the Railway Hotel was beginning to be considered
inadequate and on the 4th March of that year a joint committee was formed with
Zetland Lodge to consider the desirability of erecting a Masonic Hall.
Nothing fruitful resulted from the committee’s deliberations for, on the
29th May 1878 the then Worshipful Master proposed the purchase of and alteration
to, our present premises at, 51, Whitcliffe Road, Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire.
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the United Grand Lodge of England
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