Masons' Marks of Corbridge and Chollerford (original) (raw)

MASON’s MARKS.—It may interest you to hear the results of a Masonic quest I made last week in search of Masons' marks. I went to Corbridge-on-Tyne, an old Roman station, and found upon the battlements of the bridge the following marks:

which I carefully copied. The triangle was the most frequently displayed. This bridge, which is on the site of the old Roman Bridge, was built in A.D. 1674, and was the only one on the Tyne that resisted the flood of 1771. So much for the honest labour and skill of our earlier brethren. I was surprised to see all the marks bearing a Royal Arch significance.1I went next to Chollerford and examined the noble structure that spans the North Tyne in that place, and found the marks still more numerous than at Corbridge, but, like the other, not in great variety. I bave placed the marks in the order of their frequency.

No. 1 is scattered all over the walls.One or two other marks were too much effaced to be quite decipherable, but all of the above type are very plain, and always in or near the centre of the parallelogram that forms the face of the stones on the inside of the battlements. I could not examine the outside.I could not ascertain the date of the bridge, but it would be built to carry the road over the North Tyne, constructed by General Wade as a military route from Newcastle to Carlisle, the need of which he found during the rising for the Young Pretender in 1745.Has any one suggested that the eight angles of the sacred Svastika may be another way of expressing the eight angles of the Triple Tau? is a question I would like to ask.J. Witter, P.M., etc., St. Bede Lodge, No. 1119.

Reprinted with permission of Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, UGLE vol iv (1891). [pp. 242-43.].