Our History
In a house older still.
Freemasons arrive in Bournemouth
The first lodges are established as the town grows fast, filling with people who came for the sea air and stayed for good.
A hall is built in St Michael's Road
The Masonic hall in the Bournemouth Triangle is constructed – later restored as offices, its Masonic ceilings and chequered floor kept intact.
St Michael's Lodge is consecrated
The lodge receives its warrant from the United Grand Lodge of England and takes its name from the street where it first meets.
The war generation
Founding member Frank Edward Dawkins serves in the Royal Engineers and Royal Air Force. He is killed on 11 October 1918 – a month before the Armistice – and is remembered on the Southampton Cenotaph, his grave carrying the square and compasses.
A home of our own – The Knole
Bournemouth's lodges outgrow their scattered halls and find The Knole: a Victorian mansion built 1872–73 by John Dando Sedding for Edmund Christy. The Freemasons keep the oak panelling, stone fireplaces and fine plaster ceilings.
113 years in Bournemouth
St Michael's Lodge continues to meet on the fourth Tuesday of six months each year, at The Knole – Grade II listed, and still home.
St Michael's Road
The Masonic hall in the Bournemouth Triangle, built in 1877. A Victorian hall in the heart of the town, where the lodge met for its first decades.
The building still stands – restored as offices, its Masonic ceilings and chequered floor kept.
The Knole
Knole Road, Boscombe. A Grade II listed Victorian mansion – oak panelling, stone fireplaces, fine plaster ceilings, and the carved Vision of St Hubert in the north wall.
Our home for over seventy years, and still one of the finest old houses in Bournemouth.