Royal Durnovarian Preceptory No. 615
Warrant dated 6th February 1999. Meets at Freemasons Hall Crane Street, Salisbury,
Wiltshire SP1 2QD on the Saturday morning after the fourth Friday in February (Installation)
and November.
Parking: Crane Street Pay & display or Park & Ride
Map
Consecrated at the Masonic Hall, Westbury, Wiltshire by the Provincial Prior, Maurice
Percival Palfrey on 6th February 1999
Menbership is restricted to past and present members of the Provincial Prior's Bodyguard,
with provision in the By-Laws for the election of 'Knights of Distinction'. Salisbury
is the nearest convenient point to the geographic centre of the Province and the
Preceptor, who must be a Past Preceptor, is elected alternately from the two counties
which comprise the Province.
The name dates back to the earliest days of Templar masonry in this Province, the
short lived Durnovarian Encampment working in Dorchester in the 1790's and Royal
Durnovarian Encampment, also in Dorchester, from 1836 to 1840, whose Warrant was
issued on his own authority by the Duke of Sussex in 1836, when he erected the Templar
Province of Dorset.
The banner shows the Mantle Badge of the Provincial Bodyguard framed by six bees
to represent the six other Preceptories, at the time of Founding, from which the
Bodyguard were drawn and also reminding the Bodyguard members to be as 'busy as bees'.
The twenty Founders, perhaps predictably, came from every Preceptory in the Province.
