Provincial Grand Lodges

The Grand Master Mason commissions Provincial Grand Masters to assist him in the overseeing of the Lodges in the 32 provinces that are spread across Scotland. Every Provincial Grand Master represents the Grand Master Mason and co-ordinates between the Lodges of his province and the Grand Lodge in Edinburgh. By the late 1500s, there were at least 13 established lodges across Scotland, from Edinburgh to Perth. But it wasn’t until the turn of the 16th Century that those medieval guilds gained an institutional structure – the point which many consider to be the birth of modern Freemasonry. The records of the earliest meetings are usually considered to be the best evidence of a lodge having any real organisation. The oldest Minutes in the world, which date to January 1599, are from Lodge Aitchison’s Haven in East Lothian, Scotland, which closed in 1852.