En: St. Edmund’s Masonic Church, Rochdale

St. Edmund’s Masonic Church, Rochdale

by Jeff Peace

St Edmund’s Church was commissioned by Albert Hudson Royds, a industrialist, banker and Freemason who belonged to Rochdale’s prominent Royds family of wool merchants, financiers of the Rochdale Canal.Royds acquired a crossroads at the highest point of Rochdale and commissioned the Manchester-based practice of James Medland and Henry Taylor to design and construct a new church building “at a time when Freemasonry in Rochdale was a strong force and its members were stalwarts of the local community”. The building was constructed between 1870-1873 at a cost between £22,000 (£1.45 million as of 2013), and £28,000 (£1.84 million as of 2013), at a time when a suitable parish church could have been built for £4,000 (£260 thousand as of 2013).

References to the traditions of Masonry are everywhere at St Edmund’s, in the weathervane and lectern in particular. The interior of the church is designed around the geometric form of a cube. A hammerbeam roof springs from the walls and is decorated with the Masonic symbols of pomegranates, lilies and water lilies. The church has an “elaborate set” of stained glass windows with the Masonic theme on the south side of the building dedicated to building and Freemasonry. The Masonic theme climaxes in Royds Chapel, where the window depicts Nehemiah, Ezra and the Tyler, the guard of a Masonic Lodge, wielding the Tyler’s sword. Solomon’s Temple is shown with a likeness of Albert Hudson Royds as one of the master masons. In the main body of the church, the lectern features three brass columns all with the symbolic tools of masoncraft engraved on the base.