Andrew Prescott


The study of freemasonry as a new academic discipline1 “Why have Kings and Princes, the Nobility, Judges and Statesmen, Soldiers and Sailors, Clergy and Doctors, and men in every walk of life sought to enter the Portals of Freemasonry?”


G. W. Daynes, The Birth and Growth of the Grand Lodge of England (London: Masonic Record, 1926), p. 185.


Introduction Stephen Yeo’s 1976 book, Religions and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis, is a


study of the social life of the English town of Reading between 1890 and 1914.2 Yeo describes a town whose social fabric was bound together by many voluntary organizations and activities, «from Congregational chapels to the Social Democratic Federation, from Hospital Sunday Parades to Literary and Scientific Societies».3 This social ecology was rooted in the churches and in a paternalistic culture encouraged by large employers such as Reading’s famous biscuit manufacturers, Huntley and Palmer. Yeo paints a vivid picture of a vibrant associational culture which has now largely disappeared. Yet, Yeo admits, there was one major omission in his study. He describes how «A congregationalist minister in the 1960s, showing me the photographs of deacons, etc., on the wall of the vestry of his chapel, told me that I could not really understand late 19th-century chapel life without knowing about the masons. The Vicars of St. Mary’s and of St. Giles at different dates before 1914 were both high in the local masonic hierarchy.»4Yeo went to the local masonic hall, but was not allowed to examine the records held there. The freemasons, one of the largest and most prestigious of Reading’s voluntary organizations, with in 1895 three separate lodges 5 , were consequently left out of Yeo’s book. Since Yeo wrote, there has been a silent revolution in English freemasonry. Partly


in response to attacks on freemasonry by writers such as Stephen Knight, masonic libraries and museums have been opened to the public. The magnificent Library and Museum of Freemasonry at Freemasons’ Hall in London offers daily public tours, and in the 2002 «Open House» event attracted over 2,000 visitors in one day. Its library is freely available to scholars and lists of its historical correspondence and early returns of


1 First published in Vrijmetserarij in Nederland, ed. A. Kroon (Leiden: OVN, 2003). Riprodotto da:


http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/prescott03.html 2 Stephen Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Societies in Crisis, London: Croom Helm 1976. 3 Ibid., p. 1. 4 Ibid., pp. 341, n. 46; 351, n. 94. 5 Lodge of Union No. 414, Grey Friars” Lodge No. 1101, Kendrick Lodge No. 2043: John Lane, Masonic Records


1717-1894, London: Freemasons” Hall 1895 |(2nd ed.), pp. 267, 345, 425, which also lists five earlier lodges in Reading which had been erased: pp. 30, 87, 91, 111.


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