Posted by Ben

300 Years of English Freemasonry

Officially, the Grand Lodge of England was founded in London on St. John the Baptist’s day, June 24, 1717, when four existing Lodges gathered at the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul’s Church-yard in London and constituted themselves a Grand Lodge. The four lodges had previously met together in 1716 at the Apple-Tree Tavern, “…and having put into the Chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge), they constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in due form.” It was at that meeting in 1716 that they resolved to hold the Annual Assembly and Feast and then choose a Grand Master from among themselves, which they did the following year.