A brief history of the Wychwood Lodge

Historical notes about Wychwood Lodge and Burford

Towards the end of the 19th century several Freemasons living in and around Burford were obliged to travel some distance to attend their Lodges, and a few of them instigated the founding of a Masonic Lodge in Burford, in the belief that once established, several desirable candidates would soon come forward for initiation, to create a “useful and agreeable Lodge”.

On 12th August 1891 a meeting of six invited local Masons was held at Mr. Brown’s Room in Sheep Street, Burford to discuss well-advanced plans for the project. As a result, it was decided that the new Lodge should be called The Wychwood Lodge, with W.Bro. The Rev. D. H.W. Horlock, a distinguished, and well-travelled mason being nominated as the Founding Worshipful Master. He was able to make all the arrangements in applying for a warrant for the new lodge from the United Grand Lodge of England. He was a Past Master of four lodges including the Bowyer Lodge 1036, at Chipping Norton, which having sponsored the application became the Mother Lodge for Wychwood. Little more than a month after the meeting at Mr Brown’s the Warrant or Charter for Wychwood Lodge No 2414 was secured and dated September 18th1891.

Consecration of the Wychwood Lodge, and membership.

Wychwood Lodge was consecrated on Friday January 28th 1892, when Rt. W. Bro the Viscount Valentia, Deputy Provincial Grand Master for Oxfordshire presided; a Banquet was held at The Bull Hotel, where 63 brethren dined – 5 consecrating officers, 9 founder members and some 49 guests. A framed menu for the event hangs in the ante-room of the Lodge.
Lodge membership during the first fifteen years was made up of professional men, gentlemen, clerks in holy order, farmers, merchants, and businessmen, all of whom could afford the time to attend the lodge at an early hour on a working day and the money to travel by horse, pony and trap or carriage, and the stabling of horses at the Lamb Inn.
However, we are no longer living in the late 1800s and our membership is now as open and varied as all other societies in modern culture.

The Masonic Hall

In looking for premises for the new Lodge, the founders discovered a building across the road from Mr Brown’s room in Sheep which was ideally suited, and a 14-year lease on the property was secured for a yearly rental of £20 - equivalent to around £7000 in today’s money. Three brethren made 3% loans for the £200 required for alterations to convert and furnish the building to make it ready to hold masonic meetings.
The original lease on the building was renewed several times over the years, and then in 1913 the owner of the property asked if the members would like to purchase the building for the sum of £680 but this was felt too high a price at the time! However the building was purchased in 1918 for the sum of £750 ( almost £100,000 in today’s money).
As well as the Temple, anteroom, kitchen and Dining room, the property includes two cottages which now provide an income for the maintenance of the premises.
The Wychwood Lodge offers unique premises, which many have reported as offering just the right amount of atmosphere for Freemasonry and the united aim of our diverse membership is to make everyone feel welcome. As such, it has often been said by visitors that here is no lodge quite like the Wychwood Lodge, and we take great pride in trying to keep it so, in the hope that we are achieving the aim of our founders; by being a “useful and agreeable Lodge”.

Before Wychwood Lodge owned the premises.

An historical survey has been made of the Wychwood premises, which revealed that parts date from around 1450; three cruck roof trusses timbers with extended knees are visible in the dining room, and a probably thirteenth century ‘Caernarvon’ type arch is in the corner of courtyard. There is a fifteenth century stone fireplace in the dining room which has a vertical groove, probably carved in the 18th century to allow the cord from a clockwork spit engine to turn a down-hearth spit for roasting meat.
Ownership and/or occupancy of the property has been traced from old records and census returns. When documented in 1492, the property was owned by the guild of the chapel of St Mary in Burford Church, but was presumably lost at the dissolution of monasteries and chantry property. In 1550 the merchant Edmund Silvester acquired the building and a succession of owners and occupants are recorded here during the 17th – 19th centuries. Later parts of the building are from the 17th and 18th centuries, with a unifying three-gabled street frontage. There was formerly a central arch which gave vehicular access, when the property may have been an Inn – possibly the Fleece, or Golden Fleece. The twin doorways were presumably inserted when the property was subdivided circa 1800, with the passage on the right giving access to the Lodge.
The Masonic Temple itself may have been a barn and is thought to have been converted into a music/classroom in the mid-19thcentury when a teacher is recorded as one of the occupants, possibly in 1864, as a fragment of the Times newspaper of 18th June that year was discovered in the roof during renovation works in 1965.

From the middle of the 19th century, the medieval market town of Burford saw a decline in prosperity, largely due to being bypassed by the railways, but also by the agricultural depression. Quite different from the fashionable days of the 18th century, when up to forty coaches stopped here each day, bringing trade for the many Inns, hostelries and shops, and all sorts of people for the famous Burford Races. It was only when motor cars became widely available in the mid-20th century that tourism once more brought prosperity, although many houses and cottages are now owned by newcomers, and the old trades and service shops run by old Burford families have gone.

Acknowledgements.

Much of the information above has been gleaned from One Hundred Years of ‘The Wychwood’ 1892 -1992. A short history of the Wychwood Lodge No. 2414. We are indebted to our previous Lodge secretaries in collating this information namely W.Bro. George Brooks and W.Bro Ken Cook.

Also consulted
The Inns of Burford by Raymond Moody 2007
Burford buildings and people Catchpole, Clark and Peberdy 2008

Incidentally, in a children’s novel of 1951, entitled The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnett, the front of the building was featured as Fetterlock House, and about fifty years later the frontage and a bedroom window were used in an episode in the T.V. detective series Morse.