The Traveling Ashlar Weekly Trestleboard | Edition 0010 | Week of October 26, 2026 · A.L. 6026

The Devonshire Freemasons have applied to open their city-centre headquarters to more than the Brethren who already have a key. Exeter Today reported the application on Oct. 26. Listed-building consent 26/1346/LBC, for 27 Gandy Street, was received by Exeter City Council on Sept. 7 and validated on Oct. 12. The planning record still shows it as pending. Nothing has been approved.

The work they want permission for is practical: put back a level entrance, widen the corridor, add a disabled toilet, and rework the lobbies on the ground and first floors. The application says the aim is to keep the building in Masonic use and widen access for the community, so the listed building has a reason to last.

From the street it is a modest medieval front, Grade II, squeezed between shops. The papers say the frontage hides an amalgamation of buildings of different ages. A stone carving inside records a rebuild in 1895 after a fire. The Devonshire Freemasons have occupied it since 1885. They paid £1,100. It is not open to the public now.

A Devon Live reporter who was shown through in 2018 described the plain approach and then the temple: chairs around a black and white floor, working tools painted on the walls, tracing boards, a rough ashlar and a smooth one, and the Master's chair in the East. That tour is eight years old. It is useful only as a description of the room the application would make easier to reach.

The news this week is a form, not a ribbon. If the council agrees, a stranger will be able to walk into a hall that has been a Lodge since the year the Brethren bought it for a little more than a thousand pounds.

Essex Freemasons and the Freemasons' Charity gave Parents 1st UK £60,000 over three years. The province announced it on Oct. 20. The money keeps the charity's work with families in Tendring and adds a peer support worker.

Parents 1st UK has worked with families since 2008. The support is free, through pregnancy, birth and the early months, one to one or in a group. Last year the charity reached more than 1,900 people across Essex. The team is about 30 staff, most of them part time, and 12 volunteers. The Essex programme received the King's Award for Voluntary Service in 2023. Founder Celia Suppiah was made an MBE in 2025 for services to families in pregnancy and early childhood. She stepped down in 2024. Paula Beare is chief executive.

Beare said the three-year commitment will let them stay with parents in Tendring and reach further. Chris Hicks, Provincial Grand Charity Steward, said the need shows up in the other family grants Essex has made in recent months, including EXTRA in Jaywick and Home-Start Essex in Maldon.

The photograph is a Lullaby Time session in Clacton: Hicks, Beare, and peer support worker Sarah Wood, with parents and babies on the mats behind them. London's cheque last week was for a therapeutic programme that starts before birth. This one is the neighboring kind of work, a person who has already had a baby sitting with someone who is about to.

Durham Freemasons handed Heel and Toe Children's Therapy Centre £25,000 for the running cost of its hydrotherapy pool. The Freemasons' Charity published the gift on Oct. 20.

The money came from the Durham Freemasons Cycling Group and the Coast and Castles ride, held for the province's 2032 Festival. Organisers Gavin Rowell and Steve Piercey went back to the centre near Chester-le-Street to present it. This was the group's ninth charity ride. From Sept. 4 to 6, 30 riders and five drivers covered nearly 200 miles from Pelton to Portobello in Edinburgh.

Heel and Toe works with children who have physical disabilities and complex needs. It takes no government funding and has to raise about £900,000 a year. Natalie Duncan, the fundraising manager, said a gift this size from one event is unusual. The pool costs the charity about £5,000 a month. Rowell said the three days of wind and rain made more sense after he watched children in the water.

The province's 2032 Festival is due to launch in January 2027, with a target above £3 million over five years. The photograph is simpler than the target. Two riders in Durham shirts hold a blue jersey printed with £25,000. The pool is the part a Brother cannot see from the path.

Muaitheabhal Community Trust awarded Lodge St Clement's £4,000 toward a centenary refurbishment of its hall in Tarbert, Isle of Harris. The trust published the grant on Oct. 12. The ceremonial cheque in the Lodge photograph is dated September 2026.

The job is expected to cost about £8,000. Lodge members will give time alongside the trades. The hall has never had a full renovation. It is still used. The trust's reason for the cheque was not the centenary by itself. Donnie Morrison, a board member, said St Clement's is a community room: the pipe band and local dancers use it without paying, and so do other meetings. Henry William MacInnes, speaking for the Lodge, said the same thing from the other side of the cheque. The people who use the building every week have never paid a penny to do it.

The Provincial Grand Lodge of Inverness-shire lists the Lodge as St Clement's No. 1353, and the number is on the wall behind the men in the photograph. The province's calendar had a centenary celebration on Harris in August. The October news is the smaller, more useful sentence: half the money for a hall that already earns its keep by staying unlocked for the island.

A centenary jewel is easy to announce. A pipe band that does not have to hire a room is the part worth telling a Lodge about.

Hiram Lodge No. 1 spent this month on the centenary of the temple at 285 Whitney Avenue. The Lodge's own invitation set a Grand Lodge rededication and open house for Oct. 3, and a centennial gala for Oct. 24 at 6 p.m. Tickets were $55, with a drink ticket included. A Centennial Club gift of $100 put a name on a plaque and came with a coin and a tie. Worshipful Master Clinton Potter's October note put the open house from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the rededication at 10.

The Trestleboard has the invitation and the Worshipful Master's calendar. It does not have a report from the banquet hall, so this is the schedule and the building, not a claim about who sat where on Saturday night.

The stone under the anniversary is older and better documented. On June 12, 1926, Grand Master Arthur N. Nash and a line of Grand Lodge officers, including Past Grand Masters, the Grand Architect and the Grand Bible Bearer, went from a special communication at Hiram's rooms on Crown Street to the Whitney Avenue site and laid the cornerstone. New Haven Mayor James B. Tower, then Senior Warden of Hiram No. 1, spoke. Artifacts were placed in the stone. The Grand Lodge closed back on Crown Street and went to dinner at the Hotel Taft. The Magpie Mason retold that day on Sept. 29, ahead of this month's events.

Hiram No. 1 says it was chartered in 1750 and is the oldest Lodge in Connecticut. The Lodge has called 285 Whitney Avenue the largest and last remaining grand purpose-built Masonic temple in the state. A building that has kept the same owner for a hundred years is the rare part. The gala was the excuse to say so in public.