Victoria Munro visits Chingford Masonic Hall to find out more about the mysterious society

“We’re not a secret society,” insists Eric Husband, member of the Chingford-based branch of the mysterious Freemasons, “We’re a society with secrets.”

The Chingford Masonic Hall is an assuming one-storey building only a short walk from Chingford Station and the site of rituals and ceremonies that members of the public are forbidden to witness, although parts of the building are available to hire for parties.

While these intricate rituals – so numerous a member of 40 years told me he had not learned all of them – are underway, two of the current 29 masons in Hainault Lodge guard the doors to their ceremonial space, one armed with a dagger and the other armed with a sword.

They are purportedly prepared to use them if an outsider tries to force their way inside. Given both men are, like many of the lodge’s members, over retirement age, it’s unclear if they would be successful.

That said, it’s also possible the mason who told me they would fight to death was pulling my leg. Among other masonic lodges, the one covering Waltham Forest and part of Essex is apparently nicknamed “Happy Hainault” for their love of joking around.

According to most accounts, the world’s oldest fraternity began as a sort of trade union for medieval stonemasons, offering “lodges” to stay in when the work of building castles and cathedrals took them to far-flung parts of England. The famous secret handshake allowed travelling members with unfamiliar faces to prove they had a right to come inside.

The symbols that decorate the hall, however, hark back to a far more ancient history. In the eyes of modern masons, they are keeping alive traditions that originated with the builders of Solomon’s Temple in ancient Jerusalem, although few would know what to do with a block of granite today. One mason I spoke to, for example, was an electrician, while another worked in IT.

Regardless, on two desks in the ceremonial room sit “ashlars”, blocks of stone that prehistoric trainee stonemasons would have practised honing to a smooth surface, while from the ceiling hangs a “Seal of Solomon”, a six-pointed star made of two interlocking equilateral triangles.

It is not, I am gently but firmly told, a Star of David. It, in fact, could not be a Star of David because a central principle of the masons is that any discussion of specific religions or politics is left firmly at the door.

Morris Sharp, 66, tells me this policy was introduced “right at the start, three and a half thousand years ago” to avoid arguments. This was necessary because, while masons must have “genuine belief in a supreme being”, which supreme being is entirely up to their discretion.

Within the temple, every deity becomes the “grand geometrician”; the mason that built the world, one could say, just as the original masons built temples. Other requirements, Morris adds, include “no criminal record” and the “support of your family”, given the meetings take up a not inconsiderable amount of the members’ free time.

Eric, 76, says: “You don’t have to be a good ritualist to become a good mason, it’s more about your outlook on life.”

A key part of this is “caring for others”, a quality directed both inside and outside the lodge, since multiple members are keen to emphasise how much the lodge raises for charity each year. “For us, it’s a brotherhood,” Eric adds, “When my wife was very ill, I knew I had 30 blokes that I could phone up with the complete understanding that they would help me out.”

Asked if this solidarity means the masons are something of a networking opportunity, Paul James, 65, tells me: “Because we all become such close friends then, quite naturally, if I need an electrician, the first person is an electrician in my lodge.

“But he’s under no obligation to do me any particular favours, in fact I would not want that, I’d want him to present me with a sensible and reasonable bill. It’s no different from knocking on your neighbour’s door if you need help.”

In any case, the masons have made a deliberate decision to “step out of the shadows” in the last 20 or so years, following a decline in membership. While new recruits once had to be recommended by an existing mason, now anyone can apply to the United Grand Lodge of England, who will find a lodge that suits their needs.

In addition to lodges for different geographical areas, there are a number of lodges for interests, such as the lodge for classic car lovers, which is very charmingly called “Square Wheels”.

The decision to open up was made in an effort to combat the number of conspiracy theories about the masons exerting a sinister influence on society.

For example, Eric says, the “myth” that masons often get away with crimes because fellow members in the police let them off the hook. “Because we were behind a cloak of secrecy, people could say all sorts of things and we didn’t defend ourselves.”

The rituals and ceremonies, he insists, are “not a way of improving the world but improving yourself”, while Paul explains they “instil life lessons”, although not as an “instantaneous change”. Instead, masons gradually acquire a “way of being” from each ritual “after having listened to it over a long period of time”.

“It definitely changes you,” he tells me, “It changes your outlook. It’s helped me with my confidence, my ability to speak in front of an audience. It’s been part of a process of growing up and becoming a much more rounded individual.”

Still, it’s difficult for him to convey precisely how, given he is forbidden from going into specifics with a non-member. One direct quote from a ritual he is able to reveal to me is that they are intended to be “a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols”.

To find out more, I’d have to join. While Chingford Masonic Hall is one of relatively few in the country that is home to a “ladies lodge” for female masons, first accepted in this country at the start of the 20th century, they only meet a handful of times a year and are kept entirely separate from their male counterparts.

The only woman who has ever been inside the ceremonial room in Chingford during a ritual of the male masons, Eric says, is Florence, a guide dog.

That said, all hope is not lost when it comes to my chances of joining Happy Hainault. Throwing them what I had expected to be something of a curve ball, I ask about their policy on transgender men joining the masons.

To my surprise – and proving that they are serious about not letting politics through the door – they’re for it. “I’m sure it will come up in the future,” Morris tells me.

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