Lodge Banner History
Background information relating to the Neleus Lodge 3062 Banner
The Neleus Lodge was formed in 1904 by a small group of London Freemasons, to coincide with and commemorate the Jubilee of the Neleus Rowing Club (formed in 1854) of which they were all members, and which variously had its headquarters on the Middlesex side of the Thames at Hammerton’s Boating House, Thames Ditton. Neleus Lodge was named after Neleus, a Son of Posiedon, who was the Greek mythological God of the Seas.
Around that time, it was fashionable for the “London Set” to spend their Summer socialising on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Datchet (and particularly at the Henley Regatta) and a number of Lodges met at the Manor Hotel Datchet, and it was an obvious venue with which to set up a “Summer” Lodge at this “resort”.
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In the following years the Lodge met at a number of different venues and, in particular, between 1923 and 1946 the Lodge made its Summer home at the Dumb Bell Hotel at Taplow. During this period the first Lodge Banner was Dedicated, but later destroyed by fire at the Lodge’s Winter home at Frascati’s Restaurant, Oxford St, London, during the Blitz. No record was ever kept of its Dedication or “style”.
A second banner, designed and made by W Bro Ted Thornby, a regular visitor to Neleus Lodge over many years, was consecrated on the 6th November 1993 at the Beaconsfield Centre, and depicts an oarsman/rower passing under the bridge at Taplow, to commemorate both the Lodge’s riverside origins; a part of the Thames beside which it held its Summer meetings for so many years; and its place within the Buckinghamshire Masonic fraternity.