Page 85 - Amo Amass A-muse is some of the fruit of a lifetimes love of Freemasonry - the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235

Amo Amass A-Muse - Lodge of the Nine Muses 85

with his courtiers who could slip in and have one. By the time of Charles 11, especially}
after the Great Fire, fashionable London had started to move to the West End and high
class houses were being built. The Thatched House Tavern became a meeting place for
various societies then being formed. Around it grew a number of fashionable Coffee and
Tea houses, a Book Seller, Hair Dressers and other establishments of interest to the elite
of those days.
The first written record we have of it is by Dean Swift who, in 1711, entertained his
society to dinner there, but had to send out for Wine because the Tavern only stocked Ales.
Later, it appears, the famous Almanack bought it, rebuilt it without the thatch and added
a large room for public meetings. Underneath it were shops and a passage way leading to
Catherine Wheel Alley. In 1764, Almanack founded his famous Club. He built new rooms
for this in Kings Street, Pall Mall, but in 1778 he moved his club further up St. James’s.
Politically, St. James’s became the meeting place of the Whigs, whilst Ozinders remained
that of the Tories. Many Clubs met at the Thatched House Tavern, including the famous
Dilettenti Club which moved there in 1799 and was composed of lovers of the Arts amd
Literature. In 1785, there was a fire next door which burnt down some Masonic Trappings
and in 1814 the Tavern itself was burnt down and rebuilt.
By the time of Queen Victoria, clubs were beginning to build their own premises. At
the end of 1842, the old Tavern was pulled down to make way for the Conservative Club,
whilst the Albion Club, next door nearer to the Palace, was taken over by the Thatched
House Tavern. However, this was not to last and the Tavern, as a meeting place for Clubs
and Masonic Lodges at No. 86 St. James’s Street, came to an end and was pulled down in
its turn in 1862. Upon the site, the Union Club, later to be known as the Constitutional
Club as built to a design by James Knowles. The critics called it ‘A remarkable piece of
High Victorian at its most lavish.’ It is this building that the Grand Lodge of Mark Master
1
Masons has purchased and into which our Lodge hopes to move. However, the name
‘Thatched House’ continued as a club which took over the premises of the Egerton Club
at No. 87, again next door, nearer the Palace, of which King Edward VII was a member,
and this only lapsed just before the 1914-18 War.
The Thatched House Tavern was where we were born. It was then a Restaurant of
repute and not the kind of humble meeting place of most Lodges in those days. However,
in 1767 the first two fashionable Lodges met there. One was the Lodge of Friendship,

1 The lodge did move there on 25th September, 1979.