Charles Edward Keyser

27 September, 2016

1924 – 1930

Eight miles from Reading in Berkshire there is what was once a country parish of some 3,700 acres called Aldermaston; now it is the centre of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, and in recent years the focus of CND Easter marches. In 1893 the estate of Aldermaston Court came on the market. It comprised some 1,000 acres of parkland, a lake, woods, farms and meadows. The Court was about forty-five years old, the old house having suffered a disastrous fire in 1843. The large entrance  gates at the top of the village were flanked by two lodges, once the wings of a large house. There was a church, four small almshouses for widows, and a small school. For centuries the estate was  owned by the Forster family whose ancient tombs are in the Forster chapel in the church. The estate was bought by a Mr. Charles Edward Keyser of Derry Hill House, Bushey, a married man with one son and three daughters. By this purchase he became lord of the manor of Aldermaston, and patron of the living.

The England of those days was far different from the present. All over the country the villages were dominated by a manor house, a vicarage, and one or two private properties; the remainder were the farmers, the schoolmaster, the blacksmith and the cottagers who worked on the estate, or on the farms. In those days before state pensions and assistance a good squire was a blessing to the poor, a bad one, a disaster.

Mr. Charles Edward Keyser was the son of Mr. Charles Keyser of the Warren House, Stanmore, for forty years a leading member of the Stock Exchange. His mother was Margaret, the daughter of Edward Blore, F.R.S. a prominent architect. Charles Edward went to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge where he took his degree in 1870. From Cambridge he derived a great love of the University. In later years he gave several valuable items to the Fitzwilliam Museum, and when the new Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was built he gave so handsomely towards it that a gallery was named after him.

He was initiated into Freemasonry at the meeting of the Isaac Newton University Lodge No. 859 on 25th May 1867 on the proposition of the Rev J.F. Hardy, a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, a keen mountaineer; and seconded by Edward Darrock, then an undergraduate of Trinity, whose home was at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. W. Bro the Rev J.F. Hardy was Master at the time, and at that meeting seven were balloted for, three initiated and one raised. When Bro Keyser was raised on the 1st March 1869, eight were elected, six initiated, one passed and four raised – all at one meeting ! He does not appear to have taken office, at a time when it seems to have been easy to do so. On the other hand he was also admitted to the Inner Temple in April 1868 with a view to studying for the Bar; so that he had more than enough to occupy his mind.

When Bro Keyser bought the estate in 1893 he was in possession of a huge fortune, partly from his twenty years’ career in the City and partly from an even larger inheritance from his father who had died a few years before. His father had many times been host to the then Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. It was through this connection that one daughter Agnes (the sister of Bro Keyser) with another nurse, became Sisters in charge of the Hospital for Officers founded in 1899, in Grosvenor Gardens, during the South African War. At the end of the War, the King insisted on its continuance as King Edward VIFs Hospital for Officers, and Sister Agnes remained as its Head for some thirty years.

One year after taking his degree, Bro Keyser married Mary Emma, the daughter of Thomas Bagnail, J.P. of Newberries, Hertfordshire, It was while they were living at Bushey that there was an outbreak of typhoid in the district, and a group of public spirited gentlemen formed a company to supply fresh water to the district. The first meeting of Colne Valley Water Company was held in December 1872, and Bro Keyser was a leading figure in the enterprise, his father having declined to join it. He became Chairman in 1903, and served on the board for fifty-six years. One begins to see emerging a high sense of public duty which was to mark the whole of his life.

His other financial interests included the Mortgage Debenture Company, the Chicago and Great Western and many other American Railways, the East India Railway, the Great Northern Railway, the Appolinaris Company, the Gordon Hotels, Australian Estates and Finance, and the Union Bank of Australia. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors so that when he came to Aldermaston he was in command of great wealth.

How was his career to develop ?

At Aldermaston he became the model squire. He enlarged the house, and made it a happy home for his wife and four children. He put his estate into good order. He enlarged the schools and built a village hall at his own expense. To his great delight he found medieval frescoes in the Forster chapel, including one of St. Christopher. With the help of the architect, Mr. E. Doran Webb, a fellow member of the Society of Antiquaries, they threw out the rubbish of centuries, restored the roofs and pews in English oak, replastered many of the walls where there were no frescoes, and retiled most of the roofs. He paid for all the work, that it might be a fitting sanctuary for the people of Aldermaston.

Before he came to Aldermaston, Bro Keyser was already well known in Hertfordshire. From 1875 to 1883 he was captain of the Hertfordshire Cricket Club, scoring many successes. In 1877 he was honorary secretary for the appeal to restore St. Albans Abbey on its being made a Cathedral, and the appeal was strongly sponsored by the Province. He became a member of the newly formed County Council of Berkshire and, slightly later, of Hertfordshire. He was also a J.P. in both counties, a Deputy Lieutenant of Berkshire, and in 1899 High Sheriff of that county.

At Aldermaston he laid a cricket pitch on his estate, and joined his neighbours in the game; in later years he preferred bowls, and this is commemorated by the Provincial Keyser Bowls Cup which he gave in 1928.

He also had a great interest in archaeology, to which he devoted many years of research; He wrote a scholarly book on Tympani published in 1904: The Norman or Romanesque doorway has the door with a column or pillar on either side, surmounted by a capital, with a semicircular canopy thrown over it; in most, between the lintel and canopy, there was a semicircular stone with ancient religious carving on it called a tympanum. This form of Romanesque door came to us from France through the Normans; they got it from Italy, and the synagogue. The same pillars were before the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple and go back to the earlier Phoenician temples. A well instructed Jew, Roman or early Christian seeing those pillars outside a door, often carved with diagonal grooves, would know that it was a sanctuary dedicated to God.

The tympani record such ancient symbols as the Tree of Life, primitive beasts with their tails knotted, the soul of man flying with wings up to heaven aided by the Cross, the Sun Rising in the East, and the now more common symbol of Calvary with St. John and Our Lady on either side of the Cross. These carvings record man’s journey from animism to Christianity. It is a marvellous and scholarly book, and towards the end Bro Keyser wrote that his purpose was:-

to draw attention to the skill and fertility of design of the ancient masons, and thereby to illustrate the methods of religious teaching which were carved in the 11th and 12th centuries…. And we in these days of higher education and culture ought still to be able to appreciate the force of those doctrines which, in so realistic a manner, impressed upon the minds of the people the respective joys and terrors of a future existence, with the means by which, with due preparation and attention, they might gain the one, and avoid the other hereafter“.

In Masonry he was a generous benefactor of the principal Masonic Charities; he was Patron of the Royal Masonic Institution for Girls with twenty-six stewardships. He was Patron, Trustee and Chairman of the Board of Management, formerly Treasurer, of the Royal Masonic Institution for Boys with twenty-six stewardships. He presided at the 1899 Festival and was Patron, Trustee and member of the House Committee of the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution with twenty-eight stewardships. In Mark Masonry he was a Patron of the Benevolent Fund with twenty-five stewardships. He was Vice President of the Secret Monitor Benevolent Fund, with three stewardships. In 1903 to celebrate his fiftieth stewardship he endowed the Provinces of Hertfordshire and Berkshire and his Lodges with a considerable number of votes for the R.M.I.B. In 1907 he endowed the same Provinces each with a perpetual presentation to the R.M.B.I, and in 1912 each with a perpetual presentation to the R.M.I.B. He also paid for and furnished the chapel at the Masonic Boys’ School at Bushey.

He was a full subscribing member of at least thirty-six Lodges in numerous Provinces, including London, a past Master of twenty-four Lodges, and first Master of six Lodges of which he was a founder including Charles Edward Keyser Lodge No. 2518. He was a member of the Craft for sixty-one years, of Royal Arch Masonry for fifty-four years. For many years he held Grand Rank in Craft, Chapter and Mark Masonry.

Bro Keyser was appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master in 1906, and, on the retirement of Sir Frederick Halsey in 1924, became Provincial Grand Master. During the First Great War and the economic depression which followed, he performed probably his most outstanding service to Freemasonry. In that War, the Provincial Grand Master, the Rt. Hon and RW Bro Halsey, was called on to preside over Grand Lodge as Deputy Grand Master in the absence on military service of the Pro Grand Master. It was during this time that his Deputy in the Province, Bro Keyser, performed his most signal service. It was to see that many Lodges, going through difficult days, with many men away on military service, and with the needs of grieving parents, widows or children to be attended to, were fully met. Not least to see that when Brethren returning from prison camps, hospital or the awful slaughter both at sea or in the trenches, there were warm hearts and hands to receive them at home. Perhaps not least, to reflect that Brotherhood which so many found in the hour of death on active service.

The pattern of his giving is illustrated in the Minutes of the Halsey Lodge No. 1479. On the 29th January 1903, a letter was received from W. Bro Keyser intimating that, as the forthcoming Festival of the R.M.I.B. would be his fiftieth stewardship, he wished to present one hundred guineas to each Lodge with which he was connected, to be given in the name of that Lodge. That seems to have been the method of his general giving. At the end of the First Great War, he was a generous supporter of the Million Pound Memorial Fund, and of the Freemasons Hospital and Nursing Home, later the Royal Masonic Hospital. One ward was named after him and he was not only Patron and Trustee of many Masonic charities, but Senior Trustee and Chairman of the Hospital Committee of Management.

On 24th September 1928, RW Bro Keyser placed in position the Keystone of the new buildings of St. Albans School. This was preceded by a procession of Brethren through several streets of the City.

During his time as Provincial Grand Master, seventeen Lodges were consecrated, twelve by him and five by W. Bro William Hamilton-Underhill, one as Deputy Provincial Grand Master and four as Deputy Provincial Grand Master in charge.

Included in these was the Old Albanian Lodge No. 4999 consecrated by RW Bro Keyser on 19th May 1928, four months before he laid the keystone of the new building of the school; this was the third Old School Lodge in the Province, RW Bro Keyser having previously consecrated Old Fullerian Lodge No. 4698 on 29th May 1925 and Old Berkhamstedian Lodge No. 4903 on 21st May 1927.

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