St John’s Wood Lodge No. 4806 prepares to mark its centenary on 24th June 2026 at Freemasons’ Hall, London. We reflect on a century of ritual, fellowship, and surprisingly good soup.

When the founders of St John’s Wood Lodge gathered in 1926, they did what many Freemasons seem to do best: moaning about the world, drinking beer, being philanthropic by watching cricket at a charity match, and deciding how to change the world for the better. Today’s brethren at 4806 still do most of those, although not necessarily involving cricket.

At that time the world looked rather different. Cocktails were illegal in America, an utterly useless British Government was in power and making things worse by the day, energy costs were at an all-time high, and no one had yet explained to the Junior Warden what his actual job was. One hundred years on, at least two of those things have continued. Fortunately, one of the things they decided upon was the creation of this Lodge — and despite rumours, our Worshipful Master, whilst he claims either to be ancient or to possess ancient wisdom (we can never remember which), was not actually a Freemason at that date.

The centenary celebration will be held at the magnificent Freemasons’ Hall on Great Queen Street. Distinguished guests are expected from lodges as far afield as Ontario, Canada, and Hong Kong. The evening promises to be one for the record books — or at the very least for the centenary book, which runs to a tasteful 175 pages of A5 and has been formatted with rather more care than the minutes of the 1989 installation meeting, which managed five different typefaces. We blame the early days of computing in the hands of the then Secretary and a Master-Elect whose name escapes us. Again.