Aberdeen, 85 Crown Street, Masonic Temple. General interior view.

Description Aberdeen, 85 Crown Street, Masonic Temple. General interior view.

Date 1911

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number SC 736814

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of E 21294

Scope and Content Masonic Temple, No 85 Crown Street, Aberdeen Aberdeen's Masonic Temple was designed in 1909-10 by Harbourne MacLennan of the architectural firm, Jenkins & Marr, as a temple and meeting halls to serve the Masonic Lodges and other Orders of Freemasonry in the city. The architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere, was commissioned to photograph the interior in 1911. The temple has a barrel-vaulted ceiling with richly decorated plasterwork on the transverse beams which rise from magnificent winged figures borne on stone corbels. The room is lined with wood panelling with Ionic pilasters at intervals around the walls, and above is a plaster frieze painted with a list of the Masonic virtues. The floor is covered with a carpet with alternate squares of black and white, symbolising the mosaic pavement of King Solomon's Temple, and three steps, representing the three stages of life (youth, manhood, old age) and the three degrees in masonry (apprentice, fellow, master-mason), lead to a platform lined with ceremonial chairs. The model for the temple is King Solomon's Temple, regarded as the perfect building which was constructed under divine guidance. It is usually orientated in an east-west direction, and positioned on the upper floor of a building with an altar at one end. Decorations include Masonic emblems, and the floor is carpeted in a chequerboard pattern which symbolises human life checked with good and evil, or Man's chequered existence. The ceiling represents the 'clouded canopy'. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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