Order of Women Freemasons
fraternal organisation based in the United Kingdom
The Order of Women Freemasons is an organisation based in the United Kingdom and is the larger of the two Masonic bodies for women only. Its headquarters is at 27 Pembridge Gardens in London.
History
The Order was founded in 1908 as the Honourable Fraternity of Antient Masonry, and formed by a small group of men and women who seceded from the Co-Masonic movement. They disagreed with the theosophical precepts and the governance of the Co-Masonic organisation and wanted to return to the traditional workings of English Masonry. The leader and first Grand Master was W. F. Cobb, Rector of St Ethelburga’s church in the City of London. By the time he resigned from the Order in 1912, six Lodges had been consecrated. The second and all subsequent Grand Masters have been women.
The sanctions of United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) against any of their members who associated with “irregular bodies” of Freemasons, including those admitting women, meant that there were few male candidates after 1910. In 1920 a petition was sent from the Order to UGLE for recognition as a bona fide Masonic body but this was refused. After that, men were no longer accepted as candidates into the order although there were still a few who, distancing themselves from their own obedience, chose to remain in high office.
“Order of Women Freemasons” enters the record as fraternal organisation based in the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Order, Women and Freemasons can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7100564. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1912, 1910 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Order of Women Freemasons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.