For our June 2022 meeting we returned to Oundle on a stiflingly hot day – so warm that the Worshipful Master decreed “shirt sleeve order” both for our meeting at the Talbot Hotel and our later dinner.

The main business of the meeting was to listen to a paper discussing Masonic activity amongst the Allied prisoners-of-war held in Germany during WW2. Written by Sidney Brown, a British officer and Freemason who was captured at Dunkirk, it related how Freemasons of various nations collaborated to draw up, from memory, the rituals and ceremonies of the Craft – and how they kept their activities secret from the Germans. Being a Freemason in Hitler’s Germany was likely to land the person concerned in a concentration camp. Those attending found it most interesting and the topic prompted lively conversation afterwards.

Later in the evening we were delighted to host the Head, Mrs Sarah Kerr-Dineen, to dinner along with other members of Oundle staff and the pupil who is the current recipient of a bursary to which the Lodge regularly contributes funds.

The picture above is of Laufen Castle – Oflag VIIC – which was one of the prison camps in which the paper’s author was held. He returned to England after the war and in due course became the masonic Provincial Grand Secretary for Leicestershire and Rutland.