Lodge Leadership Tools - Hawthorne-Fortitude Masonic Lodge No ...

Masons in the News“Masons build bridges”By Chris Koenig Oxford TimesWatch out, there's a mason about. Worry not, though, because these days Oxfordshire's2,300 Freemasons proclaim themselves to be less secretive than in days ofyore - and they are keen to recruit more candidates for initiation as brethren of theircraft.Provincial Grand Master Stephen Dunning, who when not wearing his Mason's apronis a Carterton solicitor, said: "I am quite happy to talk about what we do."Stephen DunningAnd the Masons' official spokesman in the Province of Oxfordshire, TonyMcClusky, added: "We are not a secret society but a society with secrets. But wehave only two secrets: one is the handshake and the other is the words that go withthat handshake."And these only happen within the Lodge. They don't occur outside in the wider world, as secret recognitionsignals, or for any other reason."The Freemasons' Province of Oxfordshire is drawn using old boundaries, excluding parts of the Vale of theWhite Horse, notably Abingdon, but including Caversham, which is now in Berkshire. Their headquarters, theMasonic Centre, is in a splendid north Oxford Regency villa at 333 Banbury Road.There are also nine other centres - in Banbury, Bicester, Burford, Caversham, Chipping Norton, Henley,Thame, Witney, and Woodstock - where the Oxfordshire province's 57 'lodges' (groups of members) meet.In Oxford itself, one of the most famous of these lodges is Apollo, which recruits men -no women - from OxfordUniversity. It has a special dispensation to initiate masons at 18 rather than the usual 21. It now has about140 members and Mr. McClusky said that recruitment was "holding up well".Mr Dunning described Apollo as the UK's "flagship" university lodge. It was founded ("consecrated " in Masonterminology ) in 1819 by a member of the Town - as opposed to Gown - lodge, which had come into formalexistence back in 1814.But Masons are keen to explain that Freemasonry has a far older history than these dates imply. In 18thcenturyOxfordshire, for instance, there were already several lodges, but the active history starts with what isknown as the Union of 1813 when the two branches of the so-called 'Craft', known as 'Ancients' and 'Moderns',joined forces.But what influence do all these men with funny handshakes and a propensity to roll up their trouser bottomshave on business life in the county these days? After all, they once had the nickname of "backscratchers", soare they some sinister force pulling strings behind the scenes in such organisations as the police, local authori-17 ON THE WEB AT WWW.TWTMAG.COM 17(Continued on page 18)