History of Freemasonry in Stourbridge

The first Masonic meeting to take place in Worcestershire was held by The Talbot Lodge 119 at the Talbot Hotel in 1733. This Stourbridge hotel is said to have been a coaching inn for around five centuries and the first records from 1685 show that even in the seventeenth century it was a popular and well patronised meeting place. Part of the original building still exists in the form of the Chapel Room which features a fine overmantel depicting Abraham offering up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, finely carved, together with images of nearby Oldswinford Church and Castle. A more modern masonic suite was constructed in the early 20th century featuring a lodge room, committee room, large reception room. There was also a ballroom which doubled as a dining room which was the fictitious location for a romantic rendezvous in The Rotters Club, a 2001 novel by Birmingham born author Jonathan Coe.

The original Talbot Lodge was dissolved in 1769 but by then another Lodge had taken up residence in the same location. During the mid-eighteenth century there was a significant schism within masonry between two groups who came to be known as the ‘Antients’ and the ‘Moderns’. Whereas the original Talbot Lodge had initially aligned with the Moderns, in 1767 it spawned or more likely reformed as a Lodge of Antients which was recorded as the Talbot Lodge 154. Another Moderns Lodge, The Lodge of Hope 375, was formed at the Talbot Inn in 1775.

In 1813 the two Masonic factions were re-united under the aegis of the United Grand Lodge of England. Thus when the Lodge of Stability, now numbered 564, was formed in 1849 at the Vine Inn in Stourbridge, there was no question of which constitution it was to follow. Stability relocated to the Talbot in 1851 and continued to meet there until 2021, except for a few months in 1924 when they temporarily relocated to the Carlisle Hall in Victoria Street, during which time the purpose-built Lodge rooms were being completed.

During the course of the 20th century a number of other Masonic Lodges and Chapters were formed in Stourbridge and all of these met at the Talbot Hotel. Almost three centuries of Masonic involvement with the Talbot ceased in 2021 when all of the units meeting there decamped to the newly refurbished James S Webb Freemasonry Centre (JSWFC) in Victoria Street, Stourbridge. Coincidentally this new Centre for Freemasonry in Stourbridge was housed in the very building to which the Lodge of Stability had temporarily decamped almost a century earlier. The repurposed building was officially opened on Sunday 29th August 2021.

The ribbon cutting ceremony was attended by the Provincial Grand Master of Worcestershire, Right Worshipful Brother Robert Vaughan, the Deputy Mayor of Dudley, her consort and members of the Board of Stourbridge Masonic Management Limited who had been responsible for managing the transition of the building from its former use as a café to a purpose designed Masonic Hall. Guest of honour at the opening was Mrs Constance Webb whose significant donation had enabled the purchase of the premises in memory of her deceased husband Jim, a Stourbridge Mason after whom the Centre is now named.

The Centre now hosts all of the Masonic units who were meeting at the Talbot Hotel at the time of the transition. Since the opening several other groups have relocated to the JSWFC, including five units who previously met at Dudley and one Warwickshire Lodge (Lodge of Grace) who are now being hosted in Worcestershire. The JSWFC now houses in total sixteen units including eight Craft Lodges, three Royal Arch Chapters, two Rose Croix Chapters, one Knights Templar Preceptory, and a Mark Lodge to which is moored a Lodge or Royal Ark Mariners.