lifted the suspension of the lodge. This news was greeted joyfully in the town and the church bells were rung in celebration. This prompted a further round of correspondence with the Grand Lodge, since Price complained that he only heard of the Grand Master’s decision in his case when the bells started ringing.
Public and Private Space As this case illustrates, lodges were an important feature of local life. Parades and processions were until recently a major focus of public life in towns,27 and masonic parades were particularly significant, because they were associated with the ceremonies performed by freemasons for the dedication of public buildings and marked important stages in the development of the town.28 In Sheffield, for example, the opening of a canal providing the town’s first link to the sea in 1819 was celebrated by processions of lodges from Sheffield and the surrounding area, and extracts from masonic minute books describing these ceremonies were framed and proudly displayed in the offices of the canal company.29 Such processions provided both a public face for freemasonry and associated freemasonry with the town’s cultural identity. Moreover, they explicitly linked freemasons with the physical reshaping of urban public space. Such landmarks in the remodelling of Edinburgh between 1750 and 1820 as the completion of the new university buildings, the George IV Bridge and the docks at Leith were marked by huge
27 See for example Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, Berkeley: University of California Press 1986; Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns 1790-1835, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988, pp. 140-67, 202-67; Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1997; Pamela King, “Squads and Ha”s: Gender Roles and Civic Space in Lerwick”s Up Helly Aa”, paper at the University of Sheffield conference “Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe”, 2002 (available on-line at:
www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/
king.htm); Susan Smith, “Where to Draw the Line: A Geography of Popular Festivity” in Alisdair Rogers and Steven Verdovec (eds.), The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1995, pp. 141-164; Meg Twycross, “The Triumph of Isabella, or the Archduchess and the Parrot”, paper at the University of Sheffield conference “Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe”, 2002 (abstract available on-line at:
www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/
twycross.htm); Robert Withington, English Pageantry:
an Historical Outline, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1918, 2, pp. 3-193. 28 Trevor Stewart, ““Through the Streets They Tramp and Go!”: an Examination of Scottish Masonic Processions” in M. D. J. Scanlan (ed.), The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World, The Canonbury Papers 1, London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre 2002; Petri Mirala, ““A Large Mob, Calling Themselves Freemasons”: Masonic Parades in Ulster”, in: Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis (eds.), Crowds in Ireland, c. 1720-
1920, London: Macmillan 2000, pp. 117-39. 29 See Appendix, Document No. 4, below. Other masonic parades in Sheffield included: the laying of the foundation stone of Sheffield Infirmary (1793) and the opening of the Infirmary (1797): J. R. Clarke, The History of Britannia Lodge, Sheffield: J. W. Northend 1961, pp. 17-18; the Proclamation of the Peace (1814): Clarke, op. cit., p. 18; the laying of the foundation stone of St George”s, Brookhouse Hill (1821): Clyde Binfield, David Hey et al., eds: The History of the City of Sheffield 1843-1993, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1993), 2, p. 372; the laying of the foundation stone of St Mary”s, Bramall Lane (1824): ibid., pp 372-3; the laying of the foundation stone of St Andrew”s Presbyterian church, Hanover Street (July 1855): Binfield, Hey et al., op. cit., 2, p. 413; the laying of the foundation stone of the alms house commemorating the Holmfirth Flood of 1852 (21 April 1856): J. G. Fardell, A Sermon preached at Holmfirth Church on Monday, April 21st, 1856..., Huddersfield: Joseph Brook 1856.
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