A Brief History of the Cornwallis Lecture

When the newly appointed Kent Museum Trust Secretary took office in 1999, his main task was to encourage the use of the Museum and Library facilities at Canterbury. To achieve this aim, it required better presentation, to invite more Brethren to visit and bring non-masons. Above all to publicise the contents and what was available to visitors and to promote interest. One of the ideas was to open the premises on Saturdays during the summer months. But the main problem to this was to obtain enough volunteers to be available during opening hours.

The wealth of masonic information and history within the library should be made available for those who wished to increase their knowledge by masonic research. There should also be encouragement for the younger Brethren to learn.

About this time there had been several tours of the Province to promote to Museum, in the form of 'open days'. These proved very popular and successful. It showed that the interest was there, but we had to encourage it into the Library and Museum.

The Secretary's idea was to have a yearly 'ambassador', who would present a lecture on a masonic subject. The subject could be of their choice, but it must have been properly researched. To verify this; the applicant would be required to present his work in script form. The final selection would be by the PGM. It was also the Secretary's idea that it should be called The Cornwallis Lecture.

Once the idea was aired, the ProvGM's of both Provinces of Kent were also enthused. The Most Worshipful, The Rt. Hon. Lord Cornwallis, PProGM, was approached to ask if the Cornwallis name could be used to entitle the lecture. He readily agreed. His Lordship also offered himself as the first Lecturer.

The first Lecture was given at the Winter Gardens Margate in September 2002, to an audience of 600 Masons and their Ladies. It was Lord Cornwallis's request that the Ladies should be present.

The title of the lecture was "Freemasonry Universal ".

From that presentation, the 'rules' of the lecture were followed. East Kent gave the first series of six in 2003. West Kent then followed the next year and so forth.
 

The Cornwallis Lecture 2009

W.Bro. Michael Lawrence and The Lectures

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