arena
to enable his appointment as President of the Board of Benevolence and also a member of the Peace Memorial Fund Committee which was formed with the task of funding the forthcoming new Grand Lodge Building, as he was known to be a formidable fund raiser having raised £100,000 when the Regent Street Polytechnic entered on its rebuilding programme.. A long time member of the MCC he was elected its President in 1930. One would have thought that
having reached the age of 75 further promotion would be out of his reach, but in 1934 a peculiar set of circumstances arose when the PGM of Cambridgeshire died very suddenly.. This caused a problem as there was no obvious successor. The Grand Master selected RW Bro. John Edward Kynaston Studd Bt, OBE, as the new PGM of Cambridgeshire, he was aged 76 years and he held that office, together with that of President of the Board of Benevolence, until his death in 1944. I imagine him to be a
Lord Ampthill, the pro-GM with a delegation of senior Grand Officers including Bro. Studd, on his left.
very organised man with deep Christian beliefs, extremely charitable with a great sense of duty and always wanting to do what was correct and also perhaps a bit of a stickler. He must have had charm because in 1924 he married for the second time in three years after the death of his first wife. The lady in question was a Russian, Princess Alexandra Lieven, whose family had fled Russia after the Revolution. This well documented incident may
give an idea of the type of man he was. Shortly after bring made PGM he wanted to attend a meeting of the oldest Lodge in the Province, Scientific No. 88, but the dates of their meetings were such that he couldn't attend. He therefore asked if the Lodge would be kind enough to alter one its dates to enable him to attend. The Lodge readily agreed and he visited the Lodge during the year. He went on in due time to visit all of the eleven Lodges which the Province had at that time. He was very generous and donated
the two Provincial Standards which had been ordered shortly before his becoming PGM and would often give Lodges pieces of silver or some Masonic memento when he visited them. He could also be very practical and after visiting the Isaac Newton University Lodge No. 859 he wrote and offered to pay for the "cost of a full refurbishment of the sanitary and washing arrangements at the rear of the premises.” He was indeed a London Mason of great distinction whose activities during the first half of the 20th Century should not be forgotten.
Acknowledgements: I have used a
number of sources during my research and I am very grateful to the staff and authors I have used including, Grand Lodge Library and Museum, The Provincial Grand Lodge of
Cambridgeshire Web site, The City of London Library and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
WINTER 2014
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