FREEMASONS' HALL ARCHITECTURE: ASHLEY & NEWMAN AND LONDON'S MASONIC PEACE MEMORIAL

Freemasons' Hall is one of London's great interwar set-pieces — a monumental, stripped-classical building faced in Portland stone, designed by Henry Victor Ashley and Francis Winton Newman, and completed in 1933 as a memorial to the 3,225 Freemasons who died in the First World War. Built at a cost of over £1 million, raised entirely by subscription among Freemasons across the country, it remains the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England and, remarkably, the only Art Deco building in London still unaltered and in use for its original purpose.

It belongs to a distinctive strand of interwar British monumental architecture — buildings of genuine civic ambition, commemorating the losses of the First World War through scale and symbolism rather than sentiment, drawing on a deliberately eclectic mix of ancient sources to evoke the deep history of the institutions they served.

Freemasons' Hall is Grade II* listed, both internally and externally, and remains the working headquarters of English Freemasonry today.

  • Written by Gavin Paisley, director & model-maker at Chisel & Mouse based in Sussex, England.
  • Last updated: 19-Sep-26

Photograph by mgaylard, licensed under CC A 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Freemasons' Hall facade architectural scale model

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What is Freemasons' Hall?

Freemasons' Hall is the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of England, standing at 60 Great Queen Street between Holborn and Covent Garden — a site that has been a Masonic meeting place since 1775. The present building, the third on this site, was constructed between 1927 and 1933 to the designs of Ashley and Newman, following the destruction of its predecessor in an 1883 fire and subsequent partial demolition. Originally named the Masonic Peace Memorial, it was renamed Freemasons' Hall at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Today the building covers two and a quarter acres and remains in continuous Masonic use, hosting over a thousand Lodges, while also opening its principal rooms and the Museum of Freemasonry to the public.

Facts panel

Masonic headquarters and war memorial, Covent Garden, London.

  • Architects: Henry Victor Ashley and Francis Winton Newman
  • Built for: The United Grand Lodge of England, as a memorial to 3,225 Freemasons killed in the First World War
  • Constructed: 1927–1933 (foundation stone laid 14 July 1927; opened 19 July 1933)
  • Address: 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ
  • Materials: Steel frame construction faced with Portland stone
  • Architectural style: Stripped Classical / Art Deco
  • Cost: Over £1 million, raised by the Masonic Million Memorial Fund
  • Current use: Headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England
  • Designation: Grade II* listed, internally and externally (Historic England, list entry 1113218, first listed 9 March 1982)

Architects: Ashley and Newman

Henry Victor Ashley (1872–1945) and Francis Winton Newman (1878–1953) had been in partnership since 1907, running a relatively modest practice that had, up to this point, mostly designed banks and offices. Ashley was himself an enthusiastic Freemason, which gave the partnership a genuine understanding of the brief. Their winning design was chosen from an international competition — judged in part by Sir Edwin Lutyens — largely because it dealt so ingeniously with the awkward, irregular triangular site available on Great Queen Street. The Masonic Peace Memorial was by far the largest and most significant commission of their careers, and its interiors reflect the exceptional care the practice lavished on every detail of the project.

Architectural character: stripped classicism and Masonic symbolism

Historic England's listing describes Freemasons' Hall as a "massive building in stripped Classical style," its steel frame faced entirely in pale Portland stone. The exterior is austere and monumental, its main entrance on Great Queen Street marked by a clock, added in 1967 to mark the 250th anniversary of Grand Lodge's foundation, flanked by the dates 1717 and 1967. The building's design draws on a deliberately wide range of historical sources — Roman, Egyptian, Syrian, and Greek among them — a conscious echo of the deep history that Freemasonry itself claims to represent.

Inside, principal halls, meeting rooms, and staircases are lined in marble, richly detailed yet austerely neo-Grecian in character, arranged on a diagonal axis to fit the site. At the building's heart is the Grand Temple, a vast principal hall whose cornice is entirely decorated in mosaic, installed by the artist George A. H. Swanson in 1933 and dense with Masonic symbolism. Nearby, the Memorial Shrine houses a sarcophagus containing a bronze casket with a parchment roll recording the names of the fallen, which can still be rotated by hand; gilded figures of Moses, Joshua, Solomon, and St George decorate its front, with kneeling figures representing the armed services above, and seraphim holding trumpets at each corner.

Our architectural sculpture focuses on the main entrance, the building's most recognisable public face on Great Queen Street.

Photograph by Mr Thinktank, licensed under CC A 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

History: a memorial funded by subscription

The Premier Grand Lodge of England first acquired a site on Great Queen Street in 1775, commissioning the architect and draughtsman Thomas Sandby to build a hall, which opened in 1776. That building was replaced in 1860 by a second, designed by Frederick Pepys Cockerell, which was in turn severely weakened by fire in 1883 and partially demolished in 1910. The site's third and present building was conceived after the First World War as a deliberate act of remembrance: a memorial to the 3,225 Freemasons killed on active service, funded entirely through the Masonic Million Memorial Fund, which raised over £1 million from Masonic Lodges across the country, including more than £825,000 from a single fundraising luncheon for over seven thousand Freemasons at Kensington Olympia in 1925.

Construction began with the laying of the foundation stone on 14 July 1927, and the building opened on 19 July 1933, when it was formally opened by Field Marshal the Duke of Connaught. It was renamed Freemasons' Hall in 1939, as the world entered a second global conflict the building had been built to mourn the losses of the first.

Cultural significance

Freemasons' Hall occupies an unusual position among London's Art Deco landmarks: it is, by most accounts, the only Art Deco building in the city that remains unaltered and still in use for precisely the purpose it was built for, continuously serving as the working headquarters of English Freemasonry for over ninety years. Its architecture fuses monumental scale with an unusually personal act of commemoration — the Memorial Shrine at its heart naming individual Freemasons lost in the First World War — making the building at once a working institutional headquarters, a war memorial, and one of interwar London's most complete surviving statements of stripped classical design.

The model-maker's lens

  • Focus — the main entrance on Great Queen Street, the building's most recognisable public face.
  • Detail — the etched-brass window frames and door pick out the fine lines of the entrance surround against the plaster, echoing the crisp Portland stone of the original.
  • How it reads at small scale — very well; the disciplined, stripped classical geometry of the entrance translates cleanly into plaster and brass, losing none of its monumental character in miniature.
  • How to display — alongside our other Art Deco and monumental British buildings, or as a standalone piece for anyone with a connection to Freemasonry or an interest in interwar British architecture.
  • How we made it — we created the CAD model from photographs, 3D printed the master pattern, created a single simple box mould, cast in pigmented white plaster and added an etched brass window frame and door.

View the Freemasons' Hall architectural model

Visiting Freemasons' Hall

Freemasons' Hall stands at 60 Great Queen Street, on the edge of Covent Garden between Holborn and the theatre district. Parts of the building, including the Grand Temple when not in use and the Museum of Freemasonry, are open to the public daily, with guided tours running throughout the day — making it one of relatively few working Masonic headquarters anywhere in the world that welcomes non-Masonic visitors as a matter of course.

Frequently asked questions about Freemasons' Hall

Who designed Freemasons' Hall?

It was designed by Henry Victor Ashley and Francis Winton Newman, whose partnership won an international competition, judged in part by Sir Edwin Lutyens, for its handling of the site's awkward, irregular shape.

When was Freemasons' Hall built?

It was built between 1927 and 1933, with the foundation stone laid on 14 July 1927 and the building formally opened on 19 July 1933.

Why was Freemasons' Hall built?

It was built as a memorial to the 3,225 Freemasons who died on active service in the First World War, initially named the Masonic Peace Memorial, and funded entirely by subscription from Freemasons across the country.

Is Freemasons' Hall a listed building?

Yes. It is Grade II* listed, both internally and externally (Historic England, list entry 1113218), first listed on 9 March 1982.

Can the public visit Freemasons' Hall?

Yes. Parts of the building, including the Grand Temple and the Museum of Freemasonry, are open to the public daily with guided tours, making it one of London's more unusual free architectural attractions.

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