Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Furthermore, those Districts designated as Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Argyll and the
Isles, and Banffshire, were created much earlier than Draffen indicates. 51 The
Grand Lodge configurations of 1747 and 1756 encompass these four areas, and
by 1756, eleven major Districts had been specified or existed (Table 3.5). 52
Table 3.5. New Lodges per District 1736-1800
_____________________________________________________________________________
1736-1750 1751-1765 1766-1785 1786-1800
_____________________________________________________________________________
Edinburgh 53
16 6 5 2
Western Lodges 22 12 24 17
Perth & Kinross 5 2 4 3
Dumfries & Galloway 8 6 21 9
Stirling 6 4 3 5
Fife 5 8 4 2
Aberdeen & Angus 6 9 11 5
Scottish Borders 5 3 3 1
Highlands 11 5 5 5
Orkney & Shetland 2 1 0 1
Western Isles 0 0 1 0
Un-located 1 0 0 0
_____________________________________________________________________________
TOTAL 87 56 81 50
Unlike English freemasonry and other British societies, Scottish masonic
lodges did not boast an influential metropolitan impetus. According to Clark, as
51
See Tables 3.2 and 3.3. By 1756, each of these four districts had been created, contrary to the
dates given by Draffen.
52
For the purposes of analysis, I have designated District 11 as the Western Isles.
53
For the analysis of the Districts, Edinburgh includes those lodges in Midlothian.
85