Provincial Grand Master for Hampshire and Isle of Wight
I regard it as an honour to be invited to write the Foreword to this short History of Lodge of Harmony No. 309, as it celebrates its first 200 years. The following pages tell something of the early struggles and how Lodge of Harmony brought Freemasonry to the attention of worthy gentlemen in the Gosport and Fareham areas with such success, that it attracted hundreds of them into it. Despite wars, economic depressions and national sorrows, it survives as the ninth oldest lodge of the 255 that make up the Province of Hampshire & Isle of Wight, and it continues to provide an important strand in the lives of thinking men who subscribe to the great principles on which our Order is based.
In the first 54 years of its existence, it met in 24 different venues, and it has had its number on the Register of the Grand Lodge of England changed on several occasions. But despite these tribulations, it has managed to foster and retain its unique identity, and has sponsored four daughter lodges and five granddaughter lodges, thereby extending its influence still more widely in the Province.
After 200 years there can be no doubt that the Lodge of Harmony has evolved a successful pattern of “labour and refreshment” which works, and any serious change in this would be disastrous. And so the message to Lodge No. 309 is “Congratulations. Keep going as you are, and long may you continue to be one of the most successful lodges in the Province of Hampshire & Isle of Wight.”
The Lodge of Harmony No. 309 