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Masons Lodges

The guilds and incorporations were town bodies. There were also jobs for masons outside the towns, building castles, churches, or fortifications. If the site was isolated, the builders would have to live on location, sometimes for years on end. In time the name "lodge" came to be applied to such a group of masons, probably from the lodge or hut in which the craftsmen worked, kept their tools, and rested. "Lodges" of masons are mentioned at York Minster in 1352, at Canterbury Cathedral in 1429, at the Church of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, in 1483, and at St. Giles, Edinburgh, in 1491. When in due course the task was finished, the lodge would be disbanded, and its members would have to seek work elsewhere. One may readily imagine how they would have modes of recognition to attest their status when they came to another lodge where they were not known.

From these temporary lodges are derived the Manuscript Constitutions or Old Charges, a series of documents which contain among other things the rules of the Craft. They also include, somewhat unexpectedly, moral regulations (see below, p. VII-5), reminders of religious duties, and instructions in good manners. The Old Charges further give a history of the Craft drawn largely from the Volume of the Sacred Law, the only book ever seen by most people in the Middle Ages.

The term "lodge", which was originally restricted to impermanent non-urban bodies of masons, ultimately was extended to include "territorial" lodges in the cities. Their earliest mention is in Edinburgh in 1598. By then the lodge had already assumed certain duties formerly assigned to the incorporation.