In this particular context the East refers to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)
East Storehouse at Stratford, East London. The Master’s Chair apparently has an association with the Province of Middlesex having been owned previously in its history by South Middlesex Lodge No 858 which had been constituted in 1861. However, it appears that the Chairs, including the Wardens, had belonged elsewhere before this time.
The V&A were donated the Master’s and Wardens Chairs. The South Middlesex Lodge met at the Beaufort Hotel, North End, Fulham. Before 1889 Fulham would have constituted the area known as South Middlesex as the formation of the London County Council, which absorbed this part of Middlesex, happened later in 1889 at the same time that the formal County of Middlesex also was formed. The Chair apparently predates even the founding of this Lodge. The V&A website gives plenty of information about the provenance of the set of Master and Warden’s Chairs and this I show below:
“These chairs had been on loan to the museum since 1915 and were formally presented a bit later later. Early assumptions placed their creation around 1730, the founding date of Lodge No. 76, which met at the White Bear in Golden Square, Soho. However, stylistic analysis suggests they were more likely made after 1760. In 1771, Lodge No. 76 was renamed the Well-Disposed Lodge. Later in 1779, it moved to Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire, meeting at The Cock Inn. It is possible the chairs were made during this later period, as ceremonial furniture often used conservative, traditional designs, much as it does today. This group of chairs was given by the South Middlesex Lodge but was apparently made for an earlier lodge, which was later absorbed by the Royal Alpha Lodge, the personal lodge of Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843). The papers of the original lodge do not survive so we cannot know who made the chairs.”
The notes provided on the V&A website do give an outstanding provenance for the chairs and also provide some interesting aspects of masonic history which we otherwise may not have considered. Below is an extract of part of the history of the Chairs and where they had been part of the Lodge furniture. This is from the V&A website:
“A letter from Mr John Hamill, Librarian and Curator at Freemason’s Hall, dated 5 July 1988, to Claire Graham, author of Ceremonial and Commemorative Chairs in Great Britain (1994), gives the history of the ‘Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16’, the Grand Master’s Personal Lodge. It was an amalgamation of five lodges, one of them being Lodge No. 76, at the White Bear, King Street, Golden Square, which was founded in 1730. From 1735 to 1778 the lodge met at various taverns in the City and Southwark. In 1771 it took the name ‘Well Disposed Lodge’. From 1778 to 1814 it met at the Cock, Waltham Abbey, Essex, but was dormant from 1805. In 1814 the Grand Master, HRH Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, wished to have a personal lodge and ‘took over’ the dormant Well Disposed Lodge, transferring it to his apartments at Kensington Palace and changing its name to ‘Alpha Lodge’ [it appears to have become ‘Royal Alpha Lodge in 1824, on the occasion of its amalgamation with the ‘Royal Lodge No. 210]. The whereabouts of the Lodge’s Minutes and records pre-1818 is not known. Nor can I establish a source for the statement that your chairs were the property of this lodge in the 1730s.
The earliest record of the chairs comes in the Minutes of the South Middlesex Lodge No. 858 for 25 February 1886 when the Master of that lodge was thanked “for his kindness in having the lodge chairs so beautifully repaired”. A note stated that the chairs had been acquired when the lodge was constituted in 1861 but did not state where they had come from. Unfortunately, the records of Lodge 858 were also a casualty of the blitz. The chairs were used by Lodge 858 until 1908 when they removed to Frascati Restaurant in New Oxford Street, which had a properly furnished Masonic Suite. From 1908-1915 the chairs were stored at the house of the Lodge Secretary. In February 1915 he reported that they had been loaned to the Victoria and Albert Museum. On 25 October 1925 th Lodge resolved to offer the chairs to the V&A as a gift to the nation. It was written up in the Daily Telegraph for 22 Novembers 1923 (copy enclosed [this now in departmental files]).’
As the Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16 continues to exist, it is not clear why or how these chairs passed to the South Middlesex Lodge but an undated memo, probably from the 1960s, reported that a member of the Lodge, Mr C.H. Matthews, believed that the chairs had come to the lodge ‘in the early 60’s of the last century”.
That would certainly qualify for your daily advancement in masonic knowledge. Possibly a week’s worth.
A thanks to W. Bro Nick Reay PProvGSuptWks, PProvGSoj (RA) for sending in the initial story which has been edited by W. Bro Stan Marut PPrJGD SLGR – Provincial Media Team.
See: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O302339/masonic-chair-unknown/
