The early years of the Lodge were uneventful. Many members were involved in the government of the Empire, and it was often necessary to hold a Lodge of Emergency to Initiate, Pass or Raise a brother before he sailed for his new posting. Almost all the professions were represented amongst the early members, the army, the navy, the church, the law, engineering and medicine.

 

Lectures on a wide range of subjects, masonic and non-masonic, have always formed part of the Lodge's meetings. A joining member of the Lodge who had served as Deputy District Grand Master of Bengal, Alfred Wallis Paul, gave an illustrated lecture with lantern slides on his recent journey in Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan to sixty members and their guests, in 1906, shortly after Tibet was opened once more to western travellers following Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition. The architect Frederick Bligh Bond, who is best known for his excavation of Glastonbury Abbey using the assistance of psychic powers, was a Past Master of the Lodge. In May 1913, he gave a lecture in the banqueting room after the Lodge meeting to a crowded gathering on: "Evidences of Masonic Secret Tradition in Glastonbury Abbey." In April 1940, the Lodge Chaplain, the Revd Reginald Jeffcoat, honorary curate of Christ Church with St Ewen, Broad Street, and a distinguished naturalist and sculptor, whose love of ladies of the fuller form, clothed only in the most diaphanous of drapes, can be seen in one of the sculptures over the entrance to the Wills Memorial Building, spoke on the subject of his travels in South Africa, which he illustrated with lantern slides. Subsequently after the war he married his housekeeper and settled there at the age of 75. Upon his departure, he presented to the Lodge an ivory Hiram inlaid with silver. In 1944 the custom of having annual lectures was formalised and it was agreed that the Lodge should have at least one meeting a year, preferably in September, set aside for reading a paper.

 

It was the custom in the Lodge on the death of a brother to adorn their aprons with three black crepe rosettes to show that the brethren were in mourning for the deceased and for the brethren to stand whilst the Dead March from the oratorio Saul by G. F. Handle or Beethoven's Marche Funebre was played by the organist

 

The Worshipful Master at the outbreak of the Great War was William Sefton Clarke (1869-1967), who was Secretary to the Bishop and Registrar of the Diocese of Bristol. Although at the age of forty-five he would normally have been considered to have been too old for active service he volunteered and was shipped to France with the British Expeditionary Force in April 1915, returning the following March with the rank of Major. Just as in earlier times Lodges of Emergency were called to allow men to be initiated prior to being posted overseas in India and the Far East, so during the war lodge times were changed for similar reasons and we find Captain Ernest George Douglas Pineo (1872-1942), R.A.M.C. being granted this favour as he was "over from France for such a short time" and had to return to active service at General Hospital No 51 with the British Expeditionary Force.

 

During the early months of 1919 numerous brethren were welcomed back into the Lodge upon their return from the war. The members were particularly delighted by the recognition of the services of Professor John Alexander Nixon (1874-1951), who had served as a Colonel with the South Midland Ambulance Unit in France, who was made a C.M.G. The announcement coincided with the news that another member of the Lodge, Hubert Hunt, the Cathedral Organist, was to be invested as Grand Lodge Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England. The Lodge presented him with his regalia as a token of their personal regard and affection for him.

 

Professor Walter Carless Swayne (1862-1925), who did so much to cement the links between the Lodge and the University, was murdered in August 1925 by his son in law in tragic circumstances. The son in law was suffering from shell shock as a result of his experiences in the trenches. He was under the impression that he was experiencing a gas attack and was flourishing his service revolver when Professor Swayne attempted to restrain him. The results were fatal.

 

In September 1930, the Lodge acted as host to several members of the British Association who were meeting in Bristol and in June 1939 performed the same office when the western counties section of the British Dental Association met in Bristol.

 

At the beginning of the Second World War the Lodge was called upon to raise Brother H. L. Uzzell, because his lodge, the Incorporated Society of Musicians (No. 2881), were unable to hold a meeting.

 

On Sunday 24th November 1940 Freemasons' Hall was destroyed by enemy action, and the Lodge, owing to its close association with the Bristol Royal Infirmary, was given a dispensation to meet in the Massage Department of the B.R.I. The Lodge lost many of its possessions and some of its records, including the Lodge Roll, but was fortunate that the losses were not greater and to this it owes much to the Worshipful Master at the time, Dr Francis John Hector, a lecturer in Obstetrics at the University. The original Warrant, dated 13th June 1872 was lost and it was necessary to obtain a Warrant of Consecration on 30th June 1941. Francis John Hector also presented bound hymn sheets with the words and music of the opening and closing odes in January 1954, which are replicas of those which were destroyed and they are still in use today. The Lodge's organist, W. Brother G. T. Garlick, the organist of St George's, Brandon Hill, helped to arrange the music. Dr Hubert Hunt re-wrote the score of the St. Vincent Song, which had been lost in the bombing and presented printed copies of it to the Lodge in September 1943.

 

Subsequently the Lodge met at the Constitutional Club and in 1947 transferred to the Hawthorn's Hotel, Woodland Road, and then in 1953 to a temporary Masonic Hall in Brunswick Square, where it remained until the present building was opened in 1957.

 

In April 1960, the Lodge banner, which was designed by Francis Cecil Horstmann (1906-1968), to replace the one lost in the Blitz, was dedicated by the Revd Canon John Staley, Horstmann, who died in Aldershot where he was acting as an examiner in September 1968. Francis Cecil Horstmann also designed the Bristol Provincial banner.

 

As mentioned previously in the last ten years the Lodge has continued to have close links across the world and numbers amongst its members and initiates natives of Greece, USA, Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lankan, thereby illustrating the reality of Masonry Universal and the fact that men of all races and beliefs are enrolled under its banner as brethren.