The Traveling Ashlar Weekly Trestleboard | Edition 0007 | Week of October 5, 2026 · A.L. 6026

The rumble outside Doric Lodge No. 455 in Little Current over the weekend was not a degree rehearsal. It was the North Eastern Widows Sons, a chapter of Widows Sons Ontario, touring Manitoulin Island.

The association is composed of Master Masons and their families. Worshipful Brother Wally Moore shepherded the riders around the island. They gathered for a photograph in front of the lodge, leather vests and all, under the blue Doric Lodge F. & A.M. No. 455 sign.

Rider David Myers put the point plainly: the chapter is a place where the ritual of the lodge meets the freedom of the highway, a brotherhood that extends far beyond the temple door. The Manitoulin Expositor also noted the group's support for Shriners Hospitals.

Masonic motorcycle clubs occupy an odd and useful corner of the Craft. They are not a substitute for a tiled meeting. They are what happens when the same men who sit in Lodge on a weekday evening decide the Square and Compasses can travel at highway speed.

Manitoulin is a long way from most American lodge rooms. That is part of the point. The island got a visit. The Lodge got a photograph. The road, as usual, got the rest.

Berkshire Freemasons have committed £60,000 over two years to DASH, the East Berkshire domestic-abuse charity, to fund a specialist children's independent domestic-abuse advisor.

The grant is provided through the Masonic Charitable Foundation. The practitioner will give tailored one-to-one support, normally over 10 to 12 weeks, while working with schools, social workers, parents and other agencies. DASH currently has about 24 children waiting, with a wait of around five months. Last year the children's service supported 120 children.

Among children who completed the service, 97 percent understood that the abuse was not their fault. Eighty percent felt less stressed and anxious. Ninety-three percent reported feeling more confident to try new things.

Claire Batchelor, head of advocacy and outreach at DASH, said the charity is seeing more highly complex cases, some involving sexual abuse as well. Peter Hopkins of Berkshire Freemasons said domestic abuse can have a lifelong impact, and the children need specialist help to take advantage of their education.

Masonic charity is often photographed as a large cheque and a handshake. This one is measured in waiting lists. Twenty-four children still waiting is the number that explains why the grant exists.

Two South Canterbury trusts have committed $12,000 a year for three years to keep a Cancer Society vehicle running across the district.

The Midland Masonic Charitable Trust and the Sophia Street Car Park Charitable Trust are covering running costs for the Cancer Society South Canterbury car. Three lodges added first-year funding: Mackenzie Lodge No. 93 in Fairlie, Caledonian Lodge No. 16 in Timaru, and Lodge Aorangi Timaru No. 196. New signage on the vehicle names the trusts.

The carpark trust operates the Farmers carpark on Sophia Street, where users donate change to local causes. Cancer Society community manager Sonia Sullivan said her team spends a great deal of time on the road supporting people affected by cancer. Paul Johnston, chairman of the carpark trust and a Lodge member, said the members all know someone who has gone through the mill with cancer.

This is not a building plaque or a one-night raffle. It is petrol, servicing and the unglamorous arithmetic of rural visiting. The Square and Compasses on a Cancer Society door is a useful reminder that Masonic charity sometimes looks like a car that still starts on a Thursday morning in Timaru.

Gloucestershire Freemasons brought the charities they supported in 2025 to The Hill in Stroud for Making a Difference Day, and asked them to explain what more than £300,000 in grants and donations actually did.

Charity Steward Sean Sullivan opened the afternoon. Ian Davies, head of Gloucestershire Freemasons, spoke about making the Province's community support more visible, including volunteer time through the Community Action Support Team. The Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, Edward Gillespie, addressed the gathering.

The speakers were specific. Severn Area Rescue Association said a grant paid for helmet communication equipment and an infra-red camera at its Sharpness station. Berry Hill Memorial Hall, a building purchased from the Ministry of Defence in 1921 and brought from Salisbury Plain, received support toward essential repairs. Acorns Children's Hospice, based in Worcestershire but serving Gloucestershire families, was among the groups thanked.

A Province can publish a yearly total and sit down. This event did the harder thing. It put the recipients in the same photograph, in front of a stone manor, and let the Lord Lieutenant watch the accounting happen in public.

That is a better use of a Masonic hall than another silent total in an annual report.

Suffolk Freemasons joined Evensong at St Edmundsbury Cathedral on Sept. 27 and presented £30,000 toward The Abbey of St Edmund, Reborn, the project to regenerate the ruins of Bury St Edmunds' historic abbey.

The Very Reverend Joe Hawes, Dean of St Edmundsbury, invited the Province. Mark Pendlington, Lord-Lieutenant of Suffolk, attended. So did Jean Michele Knight, Grand Master of the Order of Women Freemasons, and Carol Cole, Grand Master of the Honourable Fraternity of Antient Masonry, a visible sign of the Council for Freemasonry in Great Britain.

A further £12,000 went to Jo Metcalfe of Greener Growth for school garden makeovers at four Suffolk sites this year, with the last project scheduled for Sudbury on Oct. 24. Charities represented at the service, including SARS, Suffolk Mind, Cancer Suffolk and Greener Growth, have received more than £70,000 collectively over the past year. Ashlar House Masonic Centre was open after the service.

English Freemasonry has been funding parish work for a long time. Funding the rebuilding of an abbey ruin, in a cathedral, with both women's Grand Masters in the room, is a newer arrangement of an old habit.

The ruins have been waiting longer than any living Lodge. Thirty thousand pounds will not finish the job. It does, however, put the Craft on the scaffolding list.

Highcross Lodge No. 4835 celebrated its centenary on Sept. 29 in the Holmes Lodge Room at Freemasons' Hall, Leicester, with Provincial Grand Master Peter Kinder taking the chair for the first part of the meeting.

Lodge Chaplain Paul Toon delivered a history of the Lodge. The Provincial Grand Chaplain, the Rev. Dr Robert Stephen, gave the oration. The Provincial Grand Master then presented Centenary Jewels to the members. Worshipful Master Andrew J. York and the officers received more than ninety diners at the festive board.

The menu was the historical joke that worked. It paid homage to the meal served at the 1926 consecration, reimagined: pan-fried breast of wood pigeon, poached fillet of sole, slow roasted lamb breast, iced pistachio parfait, and cheese and biscuits. The raffle raised more than £500 for charity.

Plenty of lodges turn 100 and stop at a jewel and a photograph. Highcross went looking for the original dinner. That is a more interesting way to treat a minute book. Someone in 1926 sat down to pigeon. Someone in 2026 did the same, then passed the raffle tickets.

The Craft does not survive on jewels alone. Sometimes it survives on a kitchen that is willing to repeat itself.

After a £40,000 Freemasons' charity grant to Women's Aid Luton, Bedfordshire Freemasons spent Saturday morning in High Town Square for the launch of a new awareness campaign.

Assistant Provincial Grand Master Steve Attwood represented the Province, accompanied by Mark Harwood. They met team leaders from Women's Aid Luton and Dr Joan Bailey, Deputy Lieutenant for Bedfordshire, who was also supporting the outdoor event.

The grant is part of the Province's wider community work. The campaign itself is the public half of a private cheque: a square, a microphone, and a reminder that the people who use Women's Aid Luton are not an abstraction in a committee minute.

Two English Provinces put domestic-abuse charities on this week's Trestleboard. Berkshire funded a children's advisor. Bedfordshire stood in a public square. Neither story is glamorous. Both are the Craft doing what it claims to do when nobody is watching the ritual.

A Deputy Lieutenant in the photograph does not hurt. The useful part is still the £40,000, and the fact that the Province was willing to be seen standing next to the people who spend it.