TWO hundred and fifty years of Freemasonry in Worcestershire will be commemorated in a Worcester exhibition later this month.

It will celebrate the contribution of masons to the community from the time of Elias Ashmole, founder of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, who became a Freemason in 1646.

The exhibition has been organised by the Masonic Province of Worcestershire to coincide with a national event, Freemasonry in the Community Week.

It will be unveiled at noon on Wednesday, June 26, by the Provincial Grand Master, Barrie Cooper, at a reception in the Guildhall, where it will be open from 10am to 5pm on the next three days.

Displays will highlight some of Worcestershire's prominent masons, including Sir Edmund Lechmere, MP for West Worcestershire, who was Provincial Grand Master at the end of the 19th Century and General Sir Francis Davies, of Elmley Castle.

Sir Francis was Provincial Grand Master of Worcestershire from 1919 to 1948, after a distinguished military career including active service in the Sudan, West Africa, the Boer War, France and Gallipoli.

John Hart, who is curator of the Worcester Masonic Museum in Rainbow Hill, said the basis for the exhibition would be the three Masonic principles of brotherly love, relief and truth, translated in modern terms as friendship, charity and honesty.

The Worcester Lodge has endowed a scholarship for a Worcester Cathedral chorister and the Worcestershire Province sponsors an apprentice stonemason at the Cathedral.

Charities

Besides supporting local charities such as the County Air Ambulance, St John Ambulance, Acorns Children's Hospice and St Richard's Hospice, the Worcestershire Province, under Barrie Cooper, supported a major national millennium appeal that raised £2.3m.

It was from this fund that £50,000 was sent to the Grand Lodge in New York on September 12 last year for the fire and police services involved in the Ground Zero relief effort.