A Lodge born of controversy

In the early 1850s the Mark degree was worked in England without any governing body of its own. The United Grand Lodge of England had left it out of the Union of 1813, and English Brethren who wanted the degree had to seek it elsewhere. In London the Bon Accord Mark Lodge had been meeting since 1851 under the authority of the Bon Accord Royal Arch Chapter of Aberdeen. In December 1855 the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland decided to grant warrants to lodges of Mark Masters working outside Scotland.

The spring of 1856 brought matters to a head. In March the Board of General Purposes of the United Grand Lodge of England reported that the Mark degree was not at variance with the Craft and might be added to it. In June, Grand Lodge reversed itself and rejected the degree.

The Scottish warrant of 1856

On 18 June 1856, just two weeks after that rejection, the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland considered a petition from three Mark Masters of the Glasgow Royal Arch Chapter No. 50: Henry George Warren, Cornelius Jabez Hughes and Henry Riseborough Sharman. They asked for a warrant constituting them a regular Lodge of Mark Masters, to be held in London, under the title of “The St. Mark’s Lodge of Mark Masters”. The petition was granted unanimously. The new Lodge was to rank No. 1 on the register of Mark Master Lodges holding under Scotland. Later tradition describes the founders as London journalists who were visiting Glasgow at the time.

Five days later, on 23 June 1856, the Bon Accord Mark Lodge and three other Mark lodges met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London and formed the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons of England, with Lord Leigh as its first Grand Master. St. Mark’s was therefore warranted before the English Mark Grand Lodge existed.

The early years

The Lodge held two preliminary meetings in London, on 12 and 26 July 1856, at which ten Brethren were advanced. The Freemasons’ Monthly Magazine reported that the first regular meeting was fixed for 5 September 1856, with more than twenty candidates waiting for advancement.

The Lodge grew quickly. At the last meeting of the 1856–57 season, held at the Freemasons’ Tavern on 18 March 1857, seven Brethren were advanced. Three of them came from Canterbury, where they planned to apply to Scotland for a charter of their own. The Brethren drank to the prosperity of three other new Scottish lodges: St. John’s at Bolton, the Thistle in London, and the Arnott. They also resolved to open a Lodge of Instruction, meeting on Monday evenings at St Martin’s Stores, Long Acre.

Two Grand Lodges

For more than a decade the Mark degree in England was split between two authorities. Lord Leigh’s Grand Lodge invited all Mark lodges to come under its banner, but the Scottish lodges refused to acknowledge it. By December 1858 there were more Scottish-certificated Mark Masters in England than in Scotland. The rivalry had practical costs too: Scottish-warranted lodges in England were not allowed to receive Brethren from English lodges.

Thistle Lodge (No. 3 under Scotland) was the first of the Scottish lodges to join Grand Mark Lodge, in February 1859. Others followed over the years, although the last Scottish lodges in Lancashire did not come over until the union of 1872. St. Mark’s, the senior of them all, kept its Scottish allegiance for a while longer.

The English warrant of 1867, and the renumbering

St. Mark’s came under the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons with a Warrant of Confirmation dated 4 May 1867. Its 1895 history reproduces this warrant. In 1871 the Grand Master listed St. Mark’s, London, among the lodges “originally holding charters from Scotland” which now owed allegiance to Grand Mark Lodge.

As each Scottish lodge joined, it was given a new place on the English roll, and most of them lost their old Scottish numbers:

LodgeNumber under ScotlandNumber under England
St. Mark’s, LondonNo. 1No. 1
Thistle, LondonNo. 3No. 8
Joppa, BirkenheadNo. 5No. 11
Southwark, LondonNo. 11No. 22

St. Mark’s kept its number. That reflected its seniority: its warrant of 18 June 1856 is older than Grand Mark Lodge itself, and it is regarded as the first regularly warranted Mark lodge in England. Today it stands at the head of the numbered roll. Only the unnumbered “Time Immemorial” lodges, such as Bon Accord and Old Kent, which worked the degree before any Grand Lodge existed, rank above it.

[TODO: confirm from the Lodge’s own records how the number 1 came to be kept for St. Mark’s in 1867, and which lodge, if any, held No. 1 on the English roll before then.]

The Mother Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners

St. Mark’s has a long association with the Royal Ark Mariner degree. In November 1870, while Grand Mark Lodge was preparing to take the degree under its protection, a correspondent to The Freemason asked that “those ancient Mark lodges, the Kent and St. Mark’s, No. 1, which have always given the Ark, should have their due honour accorded to them”.

That honour came quickly. The Mother Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No. 1, moored to St. Mark’s, was consecrated on 29 January 1872. The first working of the degree under the new constitution of the Grand Master’s Royal Ark Council took place there. In the Provincial Year Book the Lodge is still styled “St. Mark’s (The Mother)”. Read more about the Mother Lodge.

The Victorian Lodge

Like most London lodges of the period, St. Mark’s moved between Masonic taverns and halls. It met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in Great Queen Street in the 1850s and again in the 1880s, at the Masonic Rooms in Little Britain in 1877, and by 1895 at the old Mark Masons’ Hall in Great Queen Street. Its by-laws were approved on 2 March 1881, and a copy survives in the Worcestershire Masonic Library and Museum.

The Lodge drew members from London’s literary and professional life. Among them were George Kenning, the Masonic publisher and regalia maker, Henry Charles Levander, its Treasurer, and E. H. Thiellay, its Secretary in the 1880s. Major Penrose J. Dunbar and Major William Edward Williams were also members, and the Rev. Philip Melancthon Holden was Master in 1880–81.

Professor Simmonds and the Illustrated History

One of the Lodge’s most notable members was Professor Peter Lund Simmonds, a journalist and writer. He was credited with bringing the original warrant from Scotland. He served the Lodge as Junior Warden in 1884, represented it as a Grand Steward in 1887, and was a Past Commander Noah of the Mother Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners.

In 1895 he wrote the Illustrated History of the St. Mark’s Mark Lodge, No. 1, London, printed by Bro. George Kenning at his works in Great Queen Street. The volume has chapters on the rise and progress of Mark Masonry, the origin of St. Mark’s Lodge, its history under Grand Mark Lodge, and the Royal Ark Mariner degree. It includes portraits of members of the Lodge and of Grand Officers, among them HRH the Prince of Wales, then Grand Master of the Mark degree, who accepted a copy. Its plates include the Lodge warrant of 1867 and the Ark Mariners’ warrant of 1872. The Freemason called it “a remarkable volume”, saying “there is nothing like it else in print in relation to Mark Masonry”. When copies were handed round at the Lodge meeting of November 1895, they were “very much admired”.

Anniversaries

Because St. Mark’s was founded in the same month as the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, the Lodge’s great anniversaries have always fallen in the same years as those of Mark Masonry in England:

[TODO: add how the Lodge itself marked its centenary in 1956 and its 150th anniversary in 2006, such as special meetings, distinguished visitors and commemorative jewels, from the Lodge’s minute books.]

St. Marks today

The Lodge meets at Mark Masons’ Hall, 86 St James’s Street, London, home of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons since 1979. It holds its installation meeting in February and further meetings in April and October. It is one of the lodges of the Mark Province of London. At its meeting of 23 April 2025 the Lodge received a Provincial delegation and carried out a triple advancement, so it is still advancing new Mark Master Masons into the degree for which it was founded in 1856.

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