Capt FG Lawrence, Adjutant 3rd South Wales Borderers (seated front row, on the ground)
In 1913 the Lodge installed its fifth Worshipful Deputy Master, Capt (later Lt Col) Frederick George Lawrence DSO of the South Wales Borderers, and at that time serving as an ‘Officer of the Company of Gentleman Cadets’ at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
Born in 1874, he went to Wellington in 1887 a year after his brother Freeling Ross Lawrence (a fellow founding officer of the Lodge), and joined him in the Beresford.
He followed his brother to Sandhurst in 1892 before joining the 24th Foot, the South Wales Borderers. Serving in South Africa he was Mentioned in Despatches in 1901 by future fellow Lodge member Lord Roberts, received the Queen’s and the King’s Medals, and was created a DSO by the King in 1902. He was Adjutant, 3rd South Wales Borderers from 1902, promoted to Captain in 1906 and became an instructor at the Royal Military College from 1910. He served on the Western Front and was promoted Major in 1915, and Lieutenant Colonel in 1916.
He added the OBE and the Croix de Guerre from both Belgium and France to his DSO in 1919.
He retired in 1923 and was appointed Commanding Officer of the Wellington College OTC (today known as the CCF). He was an active OW and mason. He edited the Register, and was one of the driving forces behind the foundation of the Lodge, which he would serve for 35 years. He was known everyone in the Wellington Community as the Colonel.
Like his predecessor in the chair Purnell, he was initiated into Wellesley Lodge No 1899, and exalted into that lodge’s chapter, both of which met in Crowthorne and commemorated the Iron Duke. He received London Rank (now LGR) in 1930 and was made a DGSwdBr in 1937.
He died in 1944.
In what was to be the last year before the war, Lawrence oversaw the fifth and last year of what had a period of extraordinary activity, health, and growth for our young lodge prior to the Great War.
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