London’s lonely young men are lining up to join the Freemasons

“I grew up with a really strong tribe of women around me”, says Joshua Pasquale, 28, standing outside the hulking bronze doors of Freemasons’ Hall on Great Queen St, Covent Garden. When I meet him he’s ethereal, draped in a silken white gown under a cartoon blue sky. “But what I was really missing was brotherhood.”

It took a move to London for the Canadian model to decide that a suitable source of supportive masculinity were the Freemasons, the mysterious fraternal organisation which bloomed in the revelry of London’s 18th century alehouses.

Joshua’s initiation ceremony is the following week, and he’s only here to shoot some photos for his modelling portfolio. But behind him are around 100 anxious and aspirational-seeming men who hope one day to call him ‘brother’. They’re lining up for the Metropolitan Grand Lodge’s 'Discover Freemasonry' event: an open-day for Londoners thinking of applying. 

“Some of them will be here to try and join the Illuminati,” sighs Omaid, press officer for London Freemasons. “But around half will probably end up applying.”

After decades of secrecy, the capital’s Freemasons are opening up. Since they began posting regularly last year, the official London Freemasons TikTok account has amassed over 30,000 followers, jumping on mayfly trends like “when Gen Z does the marketing campaign” (“Secret handshake? Only the real ones know that”) to dispel myths about the organisation and promote it to a younger audience. London Freemasons heavily promote the Connaught Club, a social club and pair of Masonic lodges for London masons under the age of 35. And while new members typically used to join through family or social ties, both the Connaught Club and the London Freemasons emphasise that prior Masonic connections aren’t required. 

“We’ve always had numbers coming in off the street”, says Ian. He’s an accountant in the regular world. But in Freemasonry he is assistant Grand Master, Grand Sword Bearer of the Metropolitan Grand Lodge. Since getting going on social media, he tells me those “numbers have doubled.”

The queue arcing along the sun-drenched pavement is diverse, both ethnically and socially. But although it does contain some older gentlemen, many attendees are young. Watching these smartly dressed young men waiting to enter Freemasons’ Hall, I’m struck by the incongruity of what’s on offer: how a 350-year-old boys club which claims to descend from the guilds of medieval stonemasons appears to be resonating with young Londoners in 2025. And, if it does, what does that say about life as a young man in the capital today?