Masonic Hall

Masonic Hall, Cheltenham

Masonic Hall with attached railings. Built between 1818 and 1823 at a cost of £4,000, raised by subscription. Designed by architect G A Underwood for Foundation Lodge, with decorations added to the dining room (or Banquet Hall) around 1833 for the Masonic Knights Templar. The building is constructed of ashlar over brick with a concealed roof.

The Hall is two storeys high on a basement, arranged in three bays. The ground floor features a tall piano nobile with a wider central bay. The heavy superstructure is battered. Horizontal rustication marks the ground floor, which has outer round-arched openings with recessed round-arched two-panelled doors, the right-hand door being part-glazed. The upper stage contains outer deeply recessed round-arched niches set in tooled architraves with panels above carrying masonic imagery. The centre is deeply recessed and features two modified Corinthian-Egyptian columns "in antis", their capitals carved with lilies and pomegranates, with a further centrally recessed round-arched niche beyond, its reveals splayed and panelled with a tooled architrave. A continuous crowning dentil entablature runs across the façade, with the blocking course raised at the centre as a crowning plinth. The basement contains four-over-eight basement sashes, otherwise concealed. The left-hand two-bay return to Albion Street has a recessed centre bay and horizontal rustication to the ground floor. A three-light ground-floor window features six-over-six sashes. The upper stage has similar niches to the outer bays and a blind three-light mullioned window set in a tooled architrave.

The interior retains a wealth of original features. The hallway to the right contains a narrow open-well staircase with wrought-iron latticework balusters embellished with lead enrichments. An oval skylight to the hall has a cornice and peaked glazing. Original joinery includes an inner six-panel door with an overlight featuring Gothic glazing bars, and ten-panel doors, some with tooled surrounds. The plasterwork features a Greek key motif to the hall cornice. The first floor has egg-and-dart cornices and ceiling friezes with fleurons. The dining room (or Banquet Hall) on the ground floor to the left displays painted decoration depicting a Regency Gothic arcade representing "the canopied stalls of the Knights Templar", with two painted recumbent effigies of knights in niches flanking a window. Above the doors are depictions of the Paschal Lamb and Bible on a cushion, together with the motto "Quis Domine Habitabat". A carved mantelpiece displays emblems of the degrees of Malta and the Rose Croix. The Temple on the first floor features two fluted Ionic columns surmounted by celestial and terrestrial globes, topped by a wrought-iron balustrade with enriched stick balusters bearing anthemions and panels of lyre motifs, with a central panel containing a scrolled heart and anthemion motif. Steps to the organ loft have stick balusters and carved tread ends. A deep cornice with dentils runs above, and the ceiling displays central sunbursts. The fireplace is decorated with masonic symbols. The first floor contains a marble Regency-style fireplace. A service staircase to the attic has rod and central bobbin balusters. The attic contains a slate fireplace. An organ by William Ayton dates from 1832.

This is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of the early purpose-built Masonic Halls to survive in England. Weymouth predates it, constructed in 1816 but refronted in 1834; Southampton was built in 1823 and Sunderland in 1832 (possibly with earlier origins). The Hall was designed as a free-standing structure but now has buildings adjoining it on two sides. It represents a splendid example of a decorative interior, both in terms of its masonic features and as a well-preserved example of Regency style in Cheltenham. The dining room ceiling was originally painted to resemble a tented canopy. The interior ironwork is probably by Wheeler. In 1845 Rowe noted that "the interior consists of two rooms for transacting the business of the order; the upper one has an organ and is fitted up with masonic emblems". The Librarian and Curator to the Grand Lodge of England, John Hamill, describes this as a "quite magnificent building". The composition is highly competent and intelligently articulated. Underwood spent a period in the office of John Soane between 1807 and 1815, was elected to the Lodge in 1818, and was concurrently working on the Church of the Holy Trinity, Portland Street. He was also the architect of Montpellier Spa (Lloyds Bank), Montpellier Walk, and the now-demolished Sherborne Pump Room, Promenade (1818). Little described the Hall as "a brilliant, unconventional essay in Romano-Egyptian with Greek detail here and there, supposedly modelled on a Roman mausoleum". The building forms a group with and abuts railings and gates.