St.Peter's Operative Lodge No.284

THE END OF THE OLD LODGE
The end of St.John's Lodge is wrapped up in a certain amount of mystery but, despite the lack of substantial records, we can speculate usefully on the matter.
Membership
The number of entrants whose names were returned to Grand Lodge in 1815 was 45, in 1822 it was 19 and in 1827 it was 26. This shows that lack of candidates was not a major problem in that the lodge had never had more than a handful of candidates in an average year.
St.Peter's Operative Lodge
We will not write at length here about the negotiations which led up to the formation of St.Peter's Operative Lodge. They are more appropriately treated in the story of that lodge. It will be enough to say here that some of the members of St,John's Lodge desired to have a benefit fund and, when they could not get one within the lodge, they left to form a new lodge, St.John's Lodge tried to stop them but the new lodge was chartered in 1820.
The seceders were not prominent members of St. John's Lodge but they may have formed a solid group of reliable back-benchers. Although the loss of these members is unlikely to have caused St.John's Lodge to become dormant the existence of the new lodge would be sufficient to make the dormancy become extinction.
The Wick Records
We know from the old records of St.Fergus's Lodge at Wick, as reported by that lodge's historian, that St.John's Lodge was in financial difficulty in 1817. In January of that year a letter was read from the Secretary of St.John's Lodge "representing the difficulty under which that lodge labours, and wishing the loan of the Funds upon their granting security for the same and paying interest at the rate of 5% for the money." But this was a time of depression following the Napoleonic Wars and the Wick "brethren decided to use their funds to buy supplies in bulk from the South and to retail these among themselves. The Wick historian is of no further help because he misunderstands the Thurso position.
The Hall
We know from external evidence that the hall was finished and occupied. Pigot's Directory for 1825-6 says of Thurso that it has no buildings of note "except the parish church in tolerable repair" and then mentions that "a mason's lodge has been lately erected". Whether or not it was ever fitted out in the way the members had intended, it was at least the chief secular building in the town. It was taken over by the Town Council and served as the Town Hall for some fifty years. Since then it has been occupied by Andersons the Ironmongers.
The Lodge Number
At first Grand Lodge did not number its daughter lodges but gradually the useful practice arose. The earliest number allocated to St.John's Lodge was 46 which it was awarded in time to be struck off in 1771. When it was replaced on the roll in 1787 it was with the number 45 and it retained that number until 1815. Between 1816 and 1826 the number was changed several times. Grand Lodge was trying to get a consecutive roll by dropping out the extinct lodges and closing the ranks. Unfortunately the job was carelessly performed and dormant lodges reemerged to make confusion worse confounded. Thus St.John's Lodge was numbered 38 in 1816, was set back to 40 in the same year, promoted to 38 in 1822 and finally reduced to 42 in 1826. As a result St. John's Lodge itself was using the number 38 in 1819 when Grand Lodge was apparently using 40.
All this is of little importance in itself but there is one reason for taking note of the numbers. In the Grand Lodge museum there is a china decanter, purchased in I958, with the legend "D.Dunnet, Lodge No.42". This, presumably, belonged to the Donald Dunnet who was an innkeeper and a founder of St.Peter's Operative Lodge. If we may trust the evidence of the number, we may conclude that at least one freemason was a member of both Thurso lodges as late as 1826,

Dormancy
After the list of intrants in 1827 there is no mention of St.John's Lodge in the records of Grand Lodge until 1837 when it  with Caledonian Lodge and others  is stated to be in arrears and to have been so for a long time. Each lodge was to informed and, because the addresses would be old ones an advertisement was to be put in the "North British Advertiser". In November it was ordered that these lodges be struck off and in February 1838 this was done.
Having given all the available facts about the last years of the lodge we conclude that there were a number of factors contributing to the dormancy and extinction. There seems little doubt that financially the lodge had overreached itself in building the hall. This was begun in the boom years of the Napoleonic Wars and the members must have hoped that the lean years would not return. The financial burden would disspirit the members and no doubt, prevented them from meeting the wishes of the group who seceded to form St.Peter's Operative Lodge.
Although the number of intrants was at a usual level it may well be that fewer members were taking an active interest in the lodge. As we have touched on briefly in the previous chapter, members and their families were leaving Thurso and the county for the South of Scotland for England and for the Colonies. Families like the Hendersons, the Roses, the Williamsons and the Patersons did not give another generation to the service of St.John's Lodge.
The weakness of the lodge in 1819 is shown by the fact that the petitioners for St.Peter's Operative Lodge were unable to deal with anyone but the Master. Apparently they had no regard for anyone but Captain Calder.
It was probably the accumulation of all these causes that brought the lodge down after it had survived for nearly one hundred years. Had events turned out just a little differently we should be preparing now to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the granting of the charter.

A Case for Benevolence
In 1891-53 years after the erasure of St.John's Lodge  an application was made to St.Peter's Operative Lodge by Alexander Henderson asking to be placed on the Annuity Branch of the Fund of Scottish Masonic Benevolence. The lodge said that it was unable to help him and returned the papers. On the face of it the lodge should have offered to do more than that.
The Surviving Funds
More enthusiasm was engendered by the next reference to St.John's Lodge in the minutes of St.Peter's Operative Lodge. It was reported in 1906 that £28 was lying in the Commercial Bank belonging to the former lodge. It was decided to try to obtain the money but, not surprisingly, the attempt was unsuccessful. A further attempt in 1910 was also unsuccessful. In making these attempts the lodge was acting under the misapprehension that it was in some way the successor of St.John's Lodge.
In 1925 Grand Lodge  which had a good claim at masonic law  took a hand and attempted to obtain the funds for the use of the benevolent funds of the projected Provincial Grand Lodge of Caithness. The result of this final attempt is not known to Grand Lodge, the Commercial Bank or the writer.
The Lodge Records
In 1910 it was proposed to write to the Misses Gerry, then resident in Viewfirth, concerning the lodge papers in their possession. It was, perhaps, as a result of that approach that the meagre records came into the custody of St.Peter's Operative Lodge. They have just sufficed to give us a faint impression of the first Thurso lodge and to get some idea of the position it held in the town and county.

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