Durham Faithful Lodge, No. 297 [erased]

AR/1551

Durham Faithful Lodge, No. 297 [erased]

1810 - 1813

Annual returns giving names, professions and residence of members of the Durham Faithful Lodge [Antients] and general correspondence relating to the running of the lodge.

16 documents

Durham Faithful Lodge was granted a travelling warrant by the Antients' Grand Lodge to meet as No. 348 in the Sixty-Eighth Regiment of Light Infantry on 22 June 1810. When the Lodge was established in 1810, the Regiment was serving in Gibraltar. Later that year it returned to England and was stationed at Hythe, Kent. After the union between the Antients' and Moderns' Grand Lodges in 1813 to form the United Grand Lodge of England the Lodge was renumbered as No. 446. By September 1819, the Sixty-Eighth Regiment was stationed at Quebec, Lower Canada. The United Grand Lodge of England sent the Lodge a Quarterly Communication but it was returned by the officers of the Sixty-Eighth Regiment, who disapproved of freemasonry. In 1832 the Lodge was renumbered as No. 297. A letter within the Annual Returns dated 21 August 1832, was sent to the United Grand Lodge from George Lyons, Sergeant Armourer, Worshipful Master, while stationed in Clare, Ireland. It informed the United Grand Lodge of England that the Regiment's commanding officer refused the Lodge permission to meet at risk of court martial. He considered the Lodge a 'party connection' and general orders were issued against members of the Orange Order. The Regiment also spent time in Lewes, Sussex and Bradbourne Lees, Kent. The last new members joined the lodge in 1837. The Sixty-Eighth Regiment departed for Jamaica in 1838, leaving Amyas Richard Griffith, Worshipful Master, behind. There is no evidence that the lodge met after the Regiment relocated to Jamaica. The Lodge was erased in 1844.