The Museum of Freemasonry and Freemasons' Hall

Published 9 November 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

The Museum of Freemasonry is a free museum on the first floor of Freemasons' Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, between Covent Garden and Holborn, open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00. The museum costs nothing and needs no booking; to see the Grand Temple, the vast ceremonial hall at the heart of the building, you join a paid guided tour, from £14 a person, at 11:00 or 14:00 on the same days.

Freemasonry is a fraternal society that began in its modern form in London in 1717, when the first Grand Lodge was founded. Its members meet in lodges, use ritual and symbolism taken from the medieval stonemasons' trade, and raise money for charity. The building on Great Queen Street is the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England, which governs freemasonry in England and Wales, and it is still used for meetings. You do not need to be a freemason, or know anything about it, to visit.

The building is also one of the best Art Deco interiors in London, and our page on Art Deco London places it among the others. This page is about how the visit and the tours work, and what you will actually see.

The building: a war memorial on a diagonal

Freemasons have met on this site since 1775, and the present hall is the third on it. It was built between 1927 and 1933 as a memorial to the freemasons who died in the First World War, and for many years it was called the Masonic Peace Memorial. The money came from members through a fund launched in 1919, the Masonic Million Memorial Fund, which raised more than £825,000 by 1925; the building finally cost about £1.3 million.

The architects were H. V. Ashley and F. Winton Newman, who won a competition in 1925. Their trick was fitting a huge building on to an awkward, many-sided plot. They set the whole thing on a diagonal: the corner tower at the west end marks the axis along which the processional corridor and the Grand Temple run. From the outside it is a massive Portland stone block in a stripped classical style. Historic England lists it at Grade II*.

The building was dedicated on 19 July 1933, when 5,353 members filled it. It survived the Blitz largely undamaged. In 1985 it was opened up to the public and to non-masonic events, and it became one of London's busiest film locations.

What is in the free museum

You go in through the main entrance on Great Queen Street. The information desk on the ground floor sends you up the stairs, or into the lift, to the museum on the first floor. It has two galleries with the library between them.

The North Gallery is where to start. Its permanent display, on three centuries of English freemasonry, explains where the society came from and what its symbols mean. The objects the museum itself picks out include:

• A huge gilded throne made in 1791 for the Prince of Wales, later George IV, when he was Grand Master. It took three months to carve from lime wood and cost £157 10s.
• The Changi "jewels", masonic badges made in secret from scrap metal by freemasons held in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore during the Second World War, and used at meetings inside the camp.
• The Kent Room, a lodge room still in use for meetings, which you can look into when it is not in use. It is the easiest way to see what the inside of a lodge looks like.

The Library is a restored Art Deco reading room with a changing exhibition down its centre aisle. The South Gallery beyond it shows more of the collection. In all the museum looks after about 30,000 objects, from ceremonial regalia and songbooks to snuffboxes made by Napoleonic prisoners of war, related to freemasonry and other friendly societies, and the library holds nearly 60,000 books, pamphlets and manuscripts.

Allow 45 minutes to an hour for the museum on its own, or about two hours with a tour (our estimate, November 2026). Photography of the galleries is allowed; the museum asks you not to photograph its staff.

The Grand Temple tour and the museum tour

The free visit does not include the ceremonial heart of the building. For that you book a guided tour. There are two public tours, each 55 minutes, run Tuesday to Saturday at 11:00 and 14:00, with 25 places each and prices from £14 a person; the dates and times available show when you book.

• The Grand Temple Guided Tour starts in the North Gallery and then takes you through the ceremonial areas to the Grand Temple itself. This is the one most visitors want.
• The Museum of Freemasonry Guided Tour stays with the history and the collection, and includes a working lodge room or two where possible.

Two points matter before you buy. First, the tours are run by UGLE Trading Company Ltd, the Grand Lodge's trading arm, not by the museum, so questions go to the tours team on +44 (0)20 7395 9265 rather than the museum desk. Second, Freemasons' Hall is a working building. The route changes with what is being used that day, and the tour operator says it will always try to show you the Grand Temple but cannot guarantee it; on the rare days it is unavailable you see other rooms instead.

Groups can book a private 55-minute tour for up to 25 people at £300, Monday to Saturday, or £350 outside normal hours, and tours in Spanish and Portuguese can be arranged.

Inside the Grand Temple

The Grand Temple is a double-height hall with a gallery round it, a raised dais at one end and a large organ. Its walls are lined with Ashburton and Botticino marble, above them runs a cove covered in mosaic, and the ceiling is coffered and painted. You enter through a pair of bronze doors in an Egyptian-influenced style by the sculptors Walter and Donald Gilbert, which are one of the moments of the tour.

The organ is by Henry Willis & Sons. It was restored in 2014, when its 2,220 pipes and 43 stops were cleaned, repaired and re-voiced and a new case of some four hundred pipes was added on the east wall. The Grand Lodge holds organ concerts in the hall from time to time, which are another way to see the room.

Around it, the principal rooms and staircases are lined in marble, with fine bronze and wrought-iron work throughout. Look for the commemorative marble panels naming the "Hall Stone Lodges": lodges whose members gave an average of ten guineas each to the building fund. Individual donors received a Hall Stone Jewel, silver for ten guineas and gold for a hundred.

Why it looks familiar from films

Since the hall opened its doors to outside events in 1985 it has become a popular film and television location. The Grand Lodge names The Crown, the James Bond film Spectre and Sherlock Holmes among its credits, and the museum mentions Mission: Impossible. Many visitors recognise the corridors without knowing where they had seen them.

That use has one consequence for visitors: on days when a crew or an event has a room, the tour route changes. Our page on London's film and TV locations has more places you may have seen on screen.

Tracing a freemason in your family

The Library and Archives are a research collection, and family history is one of the main reasons people use them. They are free, but they work by appointment. There are five research places each morning and afternoon from Tuesday to Friday; you book at least three days ahead by e-mail or on 020 7395 9257, register as a reader with photo identification, and order the items you want three days in advance from the online catalogue. Nothing can be borrowed and there are no open shelves.

If you are a visitor with a masonic grandfather and only an afternoon, contact the library before you travel. Walking in with a name and a date will rarely get you the records the same day.

Practical details: lockers, café and access

Freemasons' Hall and the museum are step-free. There are automatic doors at the main entrance and a lift, and the museum is on one level with wide corridors. The accessible toilet is behind some staff-only doors, so ask the museum team. The museum describes itself as a quiet space with no loud noises or flashing lights. Its rented audio guides were not available when we checked in November 2026.

Lockers in the first-floor cloakroom take a refundable £1 coin. There is a café and bar on the ground floor of the building, open to everyone, and toilets with baby changing between the North Gallery and the library.

Fitting it into a day around Holborn and Covent Garden

The hall is about five minutes' walk from both Holborn and Covent Garden stations, and buses 1, 59, 68, 91, 168, 171, 188, 243 and 521 stop on Kingsway, five minutes away. It sits on the border between two areas we cover separately: Covent Garden to the south-west, and Holborn to the east.

A good free half-day starts here at 10:00, when the library is open, and crosses Kingsway to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Sir John Soane's Museum and the Hunterian Museum face each other across the square.

For something lighter, Novelty Automation and its home-made coin machines are a few minutes away. Our round-up of London's oddest collections puts the museum alongside other specialist ones.

Because it is free and indoors, it is also a reliable choice on a rainy day in central London, as long as it is not a Monday. Every September the building takes part in the Open House festival, which opens other buildings that are normally closed.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Museum of Freemasonry free?

Yes. Entry to the museum on the first floor of Freemasons' Hall is free, you do not need to book, and you do not need to be a freemason. Only the guided tours of the building, including the Grand Temple, are paid, from £14 a person.

Can you go inside the Grand Temple at Freemasons' Hall?

Yes, on the Grand Temple Guided Tour, which runs Tuesday to Saturday at 11:00 and 14:00 and lasts 55 minutes. Because the hall is a working building, the operator always tries to include the Grand Temple but cannot guarantee it on every tour.

When is Freemasons' Hall open to the public?

Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00. It is closed on Mondays except for private tours, on public holidays, over the Easter weekend and for about two weeks at Christmas. The library and South Gallery also close at lunchtime and all day on Saturdays.

Do women visit Freemasons' Hall?

Yes. The museum and the tours are open to everyone, men and women, freemasons or not. The United Grand Lodge of England admits men, but there are two separate Grand Lodges for women freemasons in Britain, the Order of Women Freemasons and the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons.

How long does a visit to Freemasons' Hall take?

About 45 minutes to an hour for the free museum, and 55 minutes for a guided tour. Most people who do both spend around two hours in the building, which leaves time for the Soane Museum or Covent Garden afterwards.

Sources

• Museum of Freemasonry - Getting here: opening times and closures (checked November 2026)
• Museum of Freemasonry - Tour of Freemasons' Hall London (checked November 2026)
• Museum of Freemasonry - North Gallery (checked November 2026)
• Museum of Freemasonry - Our story (checked November 2026)
• Museum of Freemasonry - How to make a research visit (checked November 2026)
• United Grand Lodge of England - History of Freemasons' Hall (checked November 2026)
• United Grand Lodge of England - Tours (checked November 2026)
• Historic England - Freemasons Hall, list entry 1113218, Grade II* (checked November 2026)