A Secret Masonic Temple in a London Rail Hotel

I've got to say, this is one of the rarest experiences in my life. I've been left alone, locked in a secret Masonic temple. I'm Jessica the Museum Guide and today I'm doing something incredibly strange. I'm touring a lost and forgotten Masonic temple located inside a grand hotel in one of London's most famous train stations. Freemasons are known for their secrecy. Secret handshakes and rituals, but in this case their secrecy was a little too discreet. During building works in the early 2000s, a baffled architect and his team were stunned to find a hidden, lost Freemasons temple boarded up inside the walls of the former Great Eastern Hotel located in London's Liverpool Street station. Now just look, this is a true wonder. The opulent marble, the signs of the Zodiac in the ceiling, the gold, this is the Grecian temple and today we're exploring everything about it. Now this channel is no stranger to Freemasonry. In fact, I have featured two Freemasonry museums in the past. The Freemasons Hall in London and the Freemasonry Museum in Paris, which feature in my Top Strangest Museums videos for both of those cities. I'd even go so far as to say that my video on the Hellfire Caves has a lot of similarities to Freemasons. I mean, they're both 18th century secret societies known for their secret behavior and posh men, but I have always been interested in the Freemasons, especially their elaborate secret rituals and beautiful temples. I think it's likely from seeing the Simpsons Stonecutters episode at a young age. This is just a reminder that if you like content about museums, oddities, and other collections of artifacts and culture, please remember to hit the subscribe button. And if you're interested in getting even more content from me, I do have a Patreon, which I've just linked below and just above. On my Patreon, every month I release at least one full-length video tour that's not available on YouTube. Now of course, Freemasons date back to, you guessed it, masons, or quite literally stonecutters in the 14th century. These guilds of stonemasons regulated qualifications and dictated specific protocols for dealing with clients and authorities. They would help each other out in a you-scratch-my-back sort of way, and so it became sort of a fraternity. Now some people even believe that the modern Freemasons date back to the dissolution of the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages, but more on conspiracy theories a little bit later on. We'll also come back to the most common symbols when we're in the temple, and I'm going to give you a full tour inside. But before we tour the Masonic Lodge itself, I want to tell you a little bit about this hotel. Today it is It is a really wonderful hotel. When I was staying here recently, I had a nice little conversation with musician Jack White in the lift. It's always attracted a cool clientele, especially when it was built here as the Great Eastern Hotel in 1884. In fact, in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing stays here on his first night in London, so it really is a true Victorian Gothic legend. But to understand the hotel, we need to first understand its location, here in the most important railway station in the eastern part of London, straddling the historically poor East End and the very rich financial district, which is called, confusingly, the City of London. This is Liverpool Street, and it's my favorite station in the world. I love its hulking beauty. It hasn't had the polish of St Pancras or the modernization of Euston. It soon will have a redevelopment, which I'll talk about at the end of this video, but for now it's a Victorian monolith and the busiest station in the entire UK, with 95 million passengers passing through its gates last year alone. And I'm often one of those passengers. I'm always looking for a way to buy cheap tickets, and my husband turned me on to the sponsor of today's video a few years ago. Trainpal consistently helps us both find the cheapest tickets available. We save a couple of pounds every time we travel, and that really adds up. Trainpal also has a guarantee that if we find a lower price anywhere else, they'll refund us the difference. That's called their best price promise. Now that's nice because I like to keep my receipts all in one place. Trainpal gets us the best UK and European train tickets by magically finding ways to split tickets and save money. It can save you up to 95% off. I mean, just look at that discount. They don't charge any booking fees, and they're always at least one pound cheaper than the other apps. Just look, that's way cheaper than from the ticket vending machines and from other apps. We stack our discounts by using our rail cards too. Those save us one third already. And speaking of rail cards, Trainpal sells them at a 20% discount. Download the app and enter my code MUSEUM66 in the vouchers and rewards section. You'll get 20% off off of all UK rail cards and up to 5% off on all of your UK and European train tickets. Trainpal is the only company in the UK that offers discounts on top of rail card prices. Even if you're just visiting the UK, a rail card can save you so much money. Seriously, I love this app. I use it every week. You're gonna love it. Now, let's get back to Liverpool Street Station and the Masonic Temple. Now, Liverpool Street Station was built here in 1875 to replace the demolished Bishop's Gate Station. Did you know that it sits on the very first site of the Bethlehem or Bedlam lunatics asylum, as well as a recently unearthed plague pit? I'll be doing some plague videos coming up pretty soon. The Great Eastern Railway decided to build one of the city's original railway hotels called the Great Eastern. It was meant to show off the wealth and luxury of rail transport and set the tone for the country's other railway hotels. It had its own track inside the station so that you could have seawater delivered daily for the hotel's saltwater baths. However, as tourism boomed, even more luxurious hotels like the Savoy and the Ritz, as well as cheaper options, sprang up across the city. The truly wealthy began arriving in cars rather than trains and the Great Eastern fell behind the times. It languished here as a crumbling wreck. Like St Pancras Station, Liverpool Street Station and the Great Eastern Hotel were under threat of demolition and redevelopment. Thankfully, owing to a lot of activism by people like John Betjeman and just changing tastes and fashion, people began seeing the beauty in these sagging old dames. And we'll come back to a more recent redevelopment proposal at the end of this video. Finally, in the early 2000s, it was announced that the Great Eastern Hotel was getting a full facelift. British designer and restaurateur Terence Conran spearheaded a huge makeover, modernizing it completely and making it a However, during the restoration, Conran's team of builders began to notice a few weird discrepancies in the blueprints. I mean, things just weren't adding up. They decided to punch through one of the walls. Just imagine being the person who cracked open the wall and saw what was inside. I mean, this is what graded them. Faced with this architectural mystery, they discovered that this, one of the most opulent Masonic temples in the country, and maybe even the world, was actually built in 1912. Remember, the hotel was built in 1884, along with the station, so this was added later. And that explains why it wasn't on any of the original blueprints. While it wasn't a secret when it was built, it did fade from memory and was eventually bricked up. It may sound strange to build a Masonic Lodge in a hotel, but you're not thinking like a true 19th century sophisticate. In the Edwardian period, it was very common for gentlemen at the highest ranks of society to be a part of fraternal organizations like the Freemasons, and a railway hotel could be the perfect place to host meetings and rituals for out-of-town guests of honor. That would be a big value add. The first Freemasons Hall was erected in London in 1776, and that's where it is today on Great Queen Street. The big railway hotels all had their lodges, and they would compete to offer the most luxurious settings. Hence, this Grecian Temple. It was a time of great expansion for Freemasonry in London, often referred to as the Craft. The Masonic Yearbook lists well over 800 lodges consecrated between 1900 and 1912. But did you know that there were not one, but two Masonic Temples in this very hotel? There was a temple added in the basement when the hotel was rebuilt in 1901. It was called the Egyptian Temple due to its style of decoration. Now this one was never actually hidden, but sadly it was allowed to fall into disrepair, and the richly decorated walls were painted over in the 1990s. The whole thing was kiboshed when Conran redesigned the hotel, and there was really nothing for him to save. Looking at this Egyptian design here, I can't help but wonder if this chair was salvaged from the Egyptian Temple in the basement. If you know the answer, let me know in the comment section below. Back in 1912 though, the Egyptian Temple just wasn't sufficient for the needs of Masonry in the city. No expense was spared when designing the Grecian Temple, including expert Italian craftsmen who were brought to London to supervise the building works. The cost of the new construction alone was £50,000. Now remember, that's 1912, and that's approximately £5 million in today's currency. Part of the high cost was due to the structural alterations required to strengthen the building because of the sheer weight of the marble. After being used by the Scottish Masons as the Caledonian Lodge between 1920 and 1947, the Grecian Temple was eventually forgotten about and walled over, only to be discovered around 20 years ago. Okay, so let's have a good poke around in here and really explore. Now remember, I've also been left alone in here, so it really is a strange and interesting feeling. Let's back up and enter if we're just coming in for the first time. Now, this is not my first time in the Temple. My husband and I have a few personal connections to this Masonic Temple, believe it or not. We both came here together in our first year of dating to watch a Ron Perlman horror movie at a horror movie festival. And many years earlier, my husband came to LCD Sound Systems' first or second London show in this Masonic Temple, and he swears it was with only about 60 other people. Concerts and horror movies aren't the only events that happen here. Just as I arrived, there was a couple scoping it out for their wedding. So we come through this spacious mahogany-paneled ante room first, then push open these heavy studded doors. Now here are the two pillars. These ones have a lotus shape. Even though this is a Grecian Temple, this is very Egyptian. They're brass pillars with globe lights hanging from them. Every Masonic Lodge has at least two pillars. These are meant to evoke the two columns that flanked the entrance to King Solomon's Temple, and they represent strength and establishment. Now we're in this marble-lined porchway. Now here is a bust of the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. He was the English Freemason Grandmaster at the time of the building of the temple. Prince Arthur, as he was also known, was the seventh child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and he was also the Governor General of Canada. Huh. Hi, bud. And he was the only British prince to hold that title. We can see the motto here, To God and His Service, just above the stairs. Similarly, see how this staircase has a bit of a winding nature to it? We can't actually see the temple when we first walk in. Now this is another symbol inspired by King Solomon's Temple. It refers to the steps leading from the entryway to the middle chamber, and is an allegory for the individual member's progress from entered apprentice, that is a young or new member, to fellow craft, a person who will start to deepen their education and personal growth. If we were here as part of an initiation ritual, we would be blindfolded and led down here into the dark. Now we can see the entire room. It's 42 feet by 29 feet, that's about 14 meters by 10 meters, and has seating for up to 118 members, called brethren, on these upholstered leather benches and mahogany chairs that are arranged in tiers around the black and white checkered marble floor. We can also see that the seating arrangements ensure that everyone in the room has a clear view of all the proceedings, or if you're here for a movie festival, love the movie. This temple features 12 different types of marble. You know that the Great Eastern was really rolling out all the stops here to attract the best clientele. The black and white floor is common in all Freemasons temples. It's one of their most recognizable features. This is called a mosaic pavement in typical haughty Masonic language. It represents the duality of human nature. This is where initiations occur and is, quote, emblematic of human life, checkered with good and evil. It is also supposed to ground us when contrasted with the sky, which always contains symbols of the heavens. Okay, now this is interesting. Here we have the four tassels embedded into the floor. Masonic temples have these four tassels to represent virtues such as Look here, I'm just climbing a few stairs here. It just goes up to an organ and some sound equipment. Important for holding weddings, cocktail hours, and film fests here. Okay, I'm about to do something that maybe really isn't allowed. But remember, I'm alone in here right now. I'm gonna sit in the Grand Master's chair. I mean, come on, you would do the same thing. Okay, look above the throne. I'm not sitting on it any longer. But we can see the Latin inscription which means hear, see, and keep counsel. Now let's take a little bit of a closer look at this chair which belongs to the worshipful master. This chair is always oriented on the east side of the room with the secretary on one side and the treasurer on the other. This is really a grand chair. We can see some very interesting symbols on it. The most important is the Eye of Providence. This symbol is recognized by Freemasons everywhere. It's considered a representation of the watchful care of the supreme architect, an important theoretical figure in the Masonic tradition. You might also recognize this floating all-seeing eye from the American $1 bill and we'll come back to that a little bit later on. Okay, things are getting even more mathematical here. This triangular shape similar to a square essentially represents the 47th problem of Euclid, also known as Pythagorean theorem. It is a symbol of the need to quote square your square. This is a common Masonic motto that means one should keep their life in order in private and in business. Now let's contrast this with the chair on the west side of the room that belongs to the senior warden. While the worshipful master had a square on their chair, this one has the image of a plumb line. A plumb line is another tool used in literal stone masonry that's used to lay a perfect and justified line. On this chair we can also see a lot of symbols of people ceremonially dressed on horseback. I'm not sure but these almost look like hermetic symbols to me. Hermetic symbols are often associated with different secret societies and cults. For instance the medical symbol the caduceus is a hermetic symbol as is the philosopher's stone. We've spoken a little bit about hermetic symbols when we've spoken about alchemy and also when we talked about Dr. John D in my first British Museum video. These symbols are rooted in teachings that combine elements of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. I'm just guessing looking at these so let me know what you think in the comments below. On this chair here are some crossed swords a symbol of the Knights Templar, we'll come back to that soon, and symbolic of the swords used in masonic rituals. The crossed feathers are also a symbol associated with the Knights Templar. The crossed keys depict the security provided by the officer who is serving as treasurer and it's meant to remind him that he's supposed to lock the secrets of Freemasonry in his heart. Now this one is pretty self-explanatory the dove and olive branch symbolizes peace purity innocence and the messenger and this is often used as an emblem for deacons. Now here of course this is one of the most common symbols associated with Freemasonry. It's the square and the compass and we can see it a few places around the Grecian Temple. It's used to represent Freemasons and Masonic lodges all over the world. Remember modern Freemasonry actually has its roots in real stone masonry. These tools are used to create 90 degree angles. The square is used as an emblem of morality while the compass represents the relationship between the individual and society. The letter G within the square and compass stands for geometry the literal basis for stone masonry and symbolically it kind of represents all being even or square or level. But it's the ceiling that's really breathtaking we've glanced at it already but let's look at this saucer shaped dome with a five-pointed blazed star of solid glass prisms mounted in bronze. These prisms help diffuse the light remember this is a windowless room so the lighting here is very important. I have heard that there was a window here at some point but I reckon it was bricked up between 1884 and 1912 before or even during the construction of this room. Now let's look at some of the other symbols on the ceiling. Here is a ladder this is a Jacob's ladder. In the book of Genesis Jacob had a dream of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels climbing up and down. The three main rungs represent faith hope and charity while other rungs include temperance fortitude prudence and justice. In this case the light is the eastern star while the 12 houses of the zodiac surround it. The zodiac is also used in freemasonry to symbolize the journey of a mason towards enlightenment. Ah there's me the stubborn bull. The sacred volume or the volume of sacred law also known as the book of the law is the masonic term for the religious and philosophical texts that are displayed during a large meeting. You can see it here in the middle ceiling boss this is a depiction of the sacred volume. That said despite some of these symbols this temple is actually quite sparing with them compared to say the massive masonic hall that I mentioned earlier. By the way they give free tours and their museum is free it's worth checking out. Can you believe that this was forgotten? It's true in a city like London even the most magical and interesting things can get lost. Now of course a masonic temple hidden behind a wall is the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of and would the masons like you to believe that there is more to their organization other than a men's social club? I mean well maybe I mean it's pretty cool to be shrouded in mystery but most that I have met insist that their organization is simply all about fraternal camaraderie and charitable acts. Is that a naive take? I'm not sure. Is there actually any grand conspiracy connected to this organization? Well I mean yes if you think that men giving other similarly privileged men potentially unfair advantages in business and politics that's a conspiracy theory but I don't really want to go there. Instead let me just mention that the Freemasons have been at the heart of countless conspiracy theories in the zeitgeist from the from Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol to Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Common theories include the allegations of anti-christian or satanic beliefs and practices, a dark connection to the Knights Templar or even the Illuminati, and that the masons control world politics held bent on creating a new world order and the details of what that world order includes are ever shifting depending on the conspiracy flavor of the month. Of course another common trope is that there are masonic symbols hidden everywhere in plain sight from the U.S. dollar bill to Denver airport and the Manitoba Provincial Capitol building. Here in London there are supposed to be masonic symbols on the monument and some say that every Wren church is loaded with masonic imagery including the checkered floors. Sir Christopher Wren was a mason after all. My personal favorite is this compass and square that is embedded in the masonry pun intended at the Tower of London. This is so cool but likely just represents the profession of the men building the wall. There are a lot of ludicrous theories about masons and Jack the Ripper. You know how I feel about that. We're not too far from the east end here and I even see an article saying that Jack the Ripper who had royal connections came to masonic meetings here at the Great Eastern and that is of course hogwash. Today the temple and the hotel itself are grade two listed but that doesn't mean that the Great Eastern Hotel wasn't recently under threat and still is. Within the past few years a plan has been proposed to demolish part of the station and dwarf the hotel with a cantilevered high rise. Now of course the station does need an overhaul. As I mentioned it is the busiest in the country but remember it was almost just trashed once before and so thousands of public objections flooded in against the proposal including from Westminster Council and Historic England. As of right now those plans have been halted and Network Rail is currently working on a new plan. They say quote we've spent time talking and listening our latest plans embrace Victorian features including the original train shed and the Great Eastern Hotel and of course it's Masonic Temple. Thankfully that means the Grecian Temple is safe for now until maybe it gets bricked up once again when it falls out of fashion only to be rediscovered by my descendants the future little museum guides. Well that's the end of our tour again I want to thank the Andaz Hotel for allowing me access to this wonderful temple. I'll see you the next time I'm at the museum or the hidden Masonic Temple.