Mount Franklin-St. George Lodge

Meetings were held from April 1857 to establish the Mt Franklin Lodge of Hiram, the Lodge was numbered 1018EC. Subsequently a petition was sent to the Provincial Grand Master. The members conducted their meetings at the Freemasons Hotel which is now the Royal Hotel until the Masonic Hall was built in Bridport Street Daylesford.

The inauguration of Mt Franklin Lodge of Hiram took place at the Masonic Hall Daylesford on 10 September 1857. Interestingly enough Lodge meetings where held on the first Thursday on or before a full moon in every month. Holding meetings on the full moon was a common practice, because navigating the streets and tracks of a diggings township, dark at night, could and did lead to deaths and injury due to the hazard of numerous and often abandoned mine shafts into which people accidently fell. As time passed the holes were filled in and street lighting appeared, but the custom of meeting on these nights remained until 1937.