Percy Scott Worthington designed Manchester’s Masonic Hall on Bridge Street with the idea that that pass through it would have to enter through a vast columned and vaulted hall.It was a replica of King Solomon’s Temple with its coffered barrel vaulted ceiling supported by marble columns.

Opened by the Prince of Wales in 1929 and costing a quarter of a million pounds, the architectural critic Professor C.H Reilly said at the time that it conveyed at the time the atmosphere of the more prosperous and solid looking London Athenaeum club and would delight the many thousands of masons who would pass through its great hall every year.

It was Manchester second hall.Built on the site of the Old Queen’s theatre on Bridge Street, constructed on the authority of the Earl of Derby, head of the one hundred and forty six lodges in East Lancashire at the time whose headquarters had previously been in Cooper Street since 1864.

Now it seems the Grade II listed building which is also used for weddings, engagements and social functions will be brought back to life with plans to turn it into a business and conference centre with a restaurant as well as office and retail space whilst the freemasons would continue to operate from smaller, refurbished rooms.Membership of the Freemasons has reduced in recent years and use of the building has dwindled.

Freemasonary began in East Lancashire on the 24th April 1826 when R W Bro John Crossley of Scaitcliffe, Todmorden was installed as the first Provincial Grand Master of the then newly created Eastern Division of Lancashire.It remained dormant in the county from 1830-35 but on the 9th December of that year, a meeting was convened in the name of Bro Thomas Preston Esq, Merchant of Manchester at Hayward ‘s Hotel, Bridge Street , Manchester , and who had been appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master in September 1835.

There have been in the intervening years many important people leading the lodge including Lord Francis Egerton later to become Earl of Ellesmere, owner of the Bridgewater Canal and a large land owner in South Lancashire, and Lord Stanley MP, later to become the 17 th Earl of Derby who presided over the organisation for 49 years until his death in 1948.

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