The Traveling Ashlar Weekly Trestleboard

Columbia-Doric Lodge No. 149 began interior demolition this week at the Greenville Masonic Temple, nine months after a Dec. 15 fire. The four original brick walls stay. The rest of the building comes back around them.

E.W. Littlefield, Inc. & Sons, a company run by Brother Dwayne Littlefield, installed construction fencing on Sept. 30. Crews will keep the existing steel beams, add supports where needed, and frame new wood walls inside the brick. A new roof is the winter priority. The kitchen and dining room will move from the basement to the first floor, with an accessible ramp, so the public breakfasts that made the hall a town fixture can resume without a trip downstairs.

Arthur A. Crafts gave the temple to Columbia Lodge on June 21, 1929, his 61st birthday. It served as a Lodge home, a community dining room and a place for funerals. Insurance will rebuild the shell. It will not replace the furnishings, regalia and craftsmanship lost in the fire. Lodge member Luke Muzzy, who also directs the Moosehead Historical Society, said keeping those four walls means a great deal to the Lodge and to the town.

A rebuilt Temple that still looks like the building people remember is a harder job than a steel box on a new pad. Greenville chose the harder job.

A £60,000 grant from the Freemasons' Charity, awarded through Durham Freemasons, will help Stockton Citizens Advice put trained advisers in Family Hubs, nurseries, schools, toddler groups and perinatal services.

The new Community Connectors service aims to reach 1,350 beneficiaries over two years. Advisers will run benefit checks, complete applications and catch problems before they become crises. A similar school-based project already supported 387 families and unlocked £240,000 in additional household income.

Tom Gittins, Assistant Head of Durham Freemasons and a trustee of Stockton Citizens Advice, visited Chief Executive Sarah McPhie to mark the award. McPhie said the money will put a staff member in the places parents of young children already go. Gittins, a former Stockton head teacher, learned of the grant only after it was awarded. The application went in before he joined the board.

Masonic charity often arrives as a cheque in a Lodge room. This one is designed to arrive in a playgroup. The number that matters is not 60,000. It is 1,350 families who will not have to find the Citizens Advice office on their own.

South Wales Freemasons have begun a three-year partnership with St Peter's RFC in Cardiff, marked at a home fixture against Aberdare with the presentation of a sponsored jersey carrying the Province's 300 Years branding.

St Peter's, known as The Rocks, has played in Cardiff East since 1886 and fields more than 400 players from mini rugby through the senior sides. The Square and Compasses will appear on playing jerseys across the club and in a full-page match-programme presence.

The relationship was built by Chris Gough, a South Wales Freemason and former St Peter's prop who now serves as the Province's community-engagement liaison. Provincial Grand Master Robert Payne said the point is not a logo on a shirt. It is an active presence among players, supporters and volunteers. Assistant Provincial Grand Master Merrick Jones put it more sharply: visibility alone is not the objective.

A Lodge that wants to be understood by people who will never sit in one could do worse than stand on a touchline in Cardiff East for three seasons and mean it.

At Blacktown Masonic Centre on Oct. 3, Elysian Lodge presented $20,000 to NARRA Co-operative Ltd, a south-west Sydney Filipino-Australian organisation, for 2027 programmes in arts, youth leadership, family wellbeing and humanitarian work.

Grand Master Khris Albano of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory attended, with Dr Raul Amor, chairman of Masonicare. The initiative was led by Elysian Lodge under Owen Guarin. NARRA President Marcus Rivera called the gift a vote of confidence in the power of culture to bring people together.

The money is meant to travel across generations: events for community need, programmes for women and children, pathways for young Filipino-Australians, and arts that keep identity visible in suburban Sydney.

A cheque on the mosaic pavement is an old photograph. This one is interesting because the Lodge did not stop at a generic community gift. It funded a cultural organisation by name, in its own hall, with the Grand Master in the picture.

That is how a Grand Lodge of many nations actually looks when it is paying attention.

East Kent Freemasons secured £22,000 from the Freemasons' Charity for five Hygiene Bank projects in Medway, Thanet, Ashford, Canterbury-Whitstable-Herne Bay, and Cranbrook & Tenterden. The Province also bought 30 branded donation bins for Masonic centres across East Kent.

The Hygiene Bank supplies toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, sanitary products, nappies and cleaning supplies through schools, food banks, family services and refuges. Nationally it supports about 60,000 people a week. Hygiene poverty is the version of need that does not photograph well and does not appear in most Lodge charity minutes.

Assistant Provincial Grand Master Wayne Smith said most Brethren never think twice about buying deodorant, and that for thousands of people across Kent that is not the reality. Coordination sits with Ray Hazelton. The grant buys stock. The bins are the part that turns a Lodge building into a drop-off point on a Tuesday night.

A Province can write a cheque and go home. East Kent asked Lodges to collect bottles. That is the more useful half of the story.

Freemasons' Hall, Leicester, hosted a provincial first on Oct. 7: a combined Festive Board for two Craft Lodges and a Royal Arch Chapter, under the banner One Journey, One Organisation.

Gabriel Newton Cricket Lodge No. 9071 installed a Master and initiated a candidate in the Holmes Lodge Room. St John's Lodge No. 279 finished a short business meeting and joined them. Chapter of the Flaming Torch No. 4874 worked in a separate room and, by design, closed at almost the same minute. The joint photograph on the chequered pavement was the point of the evening before anyone sat down to eat.

The host Director of Ceremonies had to write a toast list that honoured both Orders without assuming every diner was a Royal Arch Mason. Provincial Grand Master and Past Grand Superintendent Peter Kinder called it a blueprint.

English Freemasonry has spent years saying the Craft and the Royal Arch are one journey. Very few Provinces have tested that sentence on a seating plan. Leicester did, and the rooms finished on time.

Duo Fraternitates Lodge No. 9146 became, on Oct. 3, the first Masonic Lodge to hold a meeting at the Bromham Scouting Centre near Bedford. Ahmed Khan was passed to the Degree of Fellow Craft in a log-walled hall with Scout neckers on the collars and folding chairs along the walls.

Past Provincial Grand Master Tony Henderson and Past Deputy Provincial Grand Master Bob Lovesey attended. Henderson assisted in the ceremony. After the work the Brethren sat down to sausages, beans, mash and onion gravy, then a campfire singalong.

Masonic meetings have been held in taverns, barns, ships and army huts. A purpose-built Scout centre is a newer venue and an old idea: take the Lodge to the room that will have you, tile it properly, and do the work. The Lodge already hopes to return next year.

If the minutes record beans and mash after a Fellow Craft, they are telling the truth about how most of the Craft actually spends its evenings. The unusual part is the building.