The Circuit of Service Lodges, formed in 1993 and currently comprising 59 lodges, exists to promote comradeship and fraternal contact between military masons. To qualify as a member of the circuit a lodge must have a distinguishable military culture and ethos that can only be achieved by a predominance of servicemen or veterans in its membership ranks. Additionally, the Circuit now seeks to encourage individual membership from Masons who have similar backgrounds and interests but who perhaps do not belong to a qualifying lodge.
The idea of forming an association to which military Lodges could belong, so as to encourage inter-visiting and expand the individual member’s experience of Freemasonry in a congenial and familiar environment was first discussed following a visit to the Public School Lodges Council Festival, where representatives of 32 Lodges gathered at one of their old schools on a summer’s day.
Certa Cito, Ubique, FitzRoy were the Lodges from where the instigators of this concept met and St Eligius joined the trio to make the fourth and final founding Lodge.
Three further lodges joined the Circuit, Rosemary Lodge. No 2851, originally the lodge of the Artists Rifles and later drawing its membership from Special Forces; Pegasus Forces Lodge, No 9393, an Airborne Forces lodge based in Hampshire; and Brothers in Arms, No 9540, a lodge based on Salisbury Plain. The list of member lodges reached ten with the addition of United Services Lodge, No 9605, based in Bridgend, South Wales and the Circuit grew to thirty eight. Victoria Rifles Lodge, No 822, was rescued when on the point of handing in its warrant by a group of Past Masters from military Lodges. It has since been recognised as an Installed Masters’ Lodge and is a genuinely all-Service forum in which the members and their guests spend time in perfect peace and harmony. The more recent additions are White Ensign Lodge on the outskirts of Birmingham; In Arduis Fidelis, members of which are from the RAMC and Army Medical Services; Gostling Murray Lodge, named after Lt Col Gostling Murray who at the time commanded the 8th Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps (in 1912 the Lodge became ‘open’ to officers of any Branch of His Majesty’s forces); Aldershot Army & Navy Lodge; East Lancashire Centurion Lodge; United Service Lodge of Derbyshire, Queensman Lodge, which took on the warrant of Justinian Lodge in May 2012, the newly formed Armed Forces Lodge in Newport, Gwent, Connaught Army & Navy Lodge, Comrades Lodge from London, the Reserve Forces Lodge of Northumbria, London Irish Rifles’ Lodge, the new Combined Services Lodge in Berkshire, Aldershot Royal Engineers, Parachute Regiment Lodge, Middlesex Armed Forces Lodge, Bloomsbury Rifles, Pro Patria Lodge, Invictus, London Scottish Rifles, Tudor Rose, Royal Rose, London Rifle Brigade, Shropshire Combined Services and the most recent addition, Marine Lodge in Bristol.
The Circuit participates as a platoon in the annual march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, undertakes a battlefield tour most years and also holds occasional social and other events, the most recent being a spectacular commemoration of the centenary of the Armistice at Freemasons’ Hall, London, before a full to capacity Grand Temple, followed by a luncheon for 600 in the Grand Connaught Rooms.