Three guineas for Arthur Askey

by | Aug 20, 2026 | Lodge

The Lodge has always known how to put on an evening. In 1937 it booked one of the biggest names in British comedy, and got him cheap. Ladies’ Festivals were a serious business before the war. The Retrospect describes them as occasions of great splendour, and the...

The gavel that came back from the Arctic

by | Aug 20, 2026 | Lodge

A gavel presented in 1894, cut from a ship that was given up for lost in the ice and then sailed home without her crew. In 1852 HMS Resolute sailed north as part of Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition, sent to look for Sir John Franklin and the men who had gone with...
A charity box built from Dickens’s staircase

A charity box built from Dickens’s staircase

by | Aug 20, 2026 | Charity, Lodge

It has been going round the table since 1901, and it is made of a staircase Charles Dickens used to walk up. Every lodge has a charity box. Ours has a provenance. It was presented in November 1901 by W. Bro. C. E. B. Kibblewhite, and it is made of oak taken from the...