Another grand occasion was arranged, this time to honour Trevor Edmunds who was celebrating 50 years of being a Freemason. Members and distinguished visitors alike of Davyhulme Lodge No 3715, meeting at Urmston Masonic Hall, were delighted to receive Assistant Provincial Grand Master Stuart Boyd, accompanied by Trafford Group Chairman Patrick Walsh, along with Assistant to the Provincial Grand Director of Ceremonies Greg Pinnington and Glynn Edmonds, Trevor’s son and former Provincial Grand Master of Lodges of British Freemasons in Germany, together with other distinguished visitors and group officers.
The lodge was opened by the WM Paul Brown and the dispensation to hold this special additional meeting was read by secretary Paul Curran and the main event of the evening began as Stuart entered the lodge room in ceremonial form and was presented to Paul.
Paul having welcomed Stuart and his attending officers, hopefully offered him the gavel of the lodge which once again and for the third time this year, Stuart accepted! Taking the master’s chair, Stuart then addressed the brethren, thanking them for their very kind welcome and explaining what a great pleasure it was to be with the members and visitors of the lodge to share this very unique and auspicious occasion.
Having ensured that Trevor was comfortably seated in prime position, Stuart began his presentation stating that his office of Assistant Provincial Grand Master carried a number of onerous responsibilities and duties, but also a number of great privileges, and the prospect of being able to officiate at a 50th celebration was, without doubt amongst the better ones. Stuart then continued quoting information which Trevor had provided during a convivial time that the two had spent together the previously.
Trevor was born in January 1937 at Trafford General (or Park as it was then known) Hospital, the first of three children, to be followed by his sisters Sandra and Brenda. His father Leonard was a shunter at Glazebrook Sidings on the Cheshire Lines Committee Railway and his mother Gertrude ‘Gertie’ was a housewife.
As for all those of his generation, his early life included the war years. Trevor was not evacuated but stayed in Davyhulme throughout the war and remembers his family running to the Anderson shelter at the bottom of their garden when the sirens sounded, signalling air raids on industrial Manchester. During these times, he remembers helping his father construct the shelter and how his mother was always most worried about their kitchen window being smashed during the raids. He also remembers seeing a flying bomb, launched from an aircraft and flying away from Manchester. This intrigued Trevor for many years prompting him to carry out his own research and ultimately discovering that the pilot had been aiming for the Mersey and this particular bomb had landed in Sale!
He attended Flixton Senior School and at 13 years of age, went to Salford Technical College, staying there for his further education and studying engineering, a subject which he said he always enjoyed and found interesting. Engineering was where he found his groove and this led to Trevor securing a five-year apprenticeship at Avro Aircraft in Chadderton, where in addition to learning his trade, he had day release and evening classes helping to attain his HNC in Engineering.
The apprenticeship itself was a challenge. He earned £2 a week and it involved him getting up at 5:30am to catch the 6:00am bus into Manchester to change buses and get to Chadderton for a 7:00am start. It was then a 4:00pm finish and the two buses back home. He mentioned that after a busy day he sometimes fell asleep on the bus and woke up in Flixton and had to make his way back home from there. At Avro’s, he remembers working on some iconic aircraft such as the Vulcan Bomber and the Shackleton aircraft which was used for air-sea rescue and other maritime work.
In 1958 his expertise was recognised in one particular area, that of the Stress Office where Avro’s had to ensure that the metal kept its strength and as he put it: “That their aircraft didn’t fall out of the sky.” This was also in the era before computers and he said it was all done, ‘by hand, pencil and brain’. By this time, he had also indulged his keenness for motorbikes. He recalls having a 125cc bike that he had bought second hand from a lady whose husband had passed away. He enjoyed the bike, although he mentioned that when motoring round the perimeter at Woodford, when the wind blew the bike hardly moved at all. This immobility didn’t last long however, and he soon geared up and bought himself a Royal Enfield which he said left he able to ‘get about even in the wind’. There was much change in the UK Defence sector at this time and Hawker Sidley took over Avro’s. Trevor later left Hawker Sidley and worked in the private sector doing stress work for a company attached to Rolls Royce.
His next career move was when he saw an advert for a mechanical engineer at Lankro Chemicals in Eccles. This development of his career away from aviation took flight when his application was successful, and he was soon involved in bringing his expertise to the operation and maintenance of their chemical pumping equipment and agitators delivering both productivity and capacity benefits to their site.
This formulation of a different career gave him increased food for thought and he then joined Cerestar, just over the canal, who supplied food, bakery and animal feed ingredients and products. It was here that his expertise and knowledge was harvested once again as he managed a team of supervisors to ensure production was maintained or improved. His time there also included being an integral part of the team that saw the first computers being installed into their operation, ensuring that they were capable of accurately monitoring production. It proved to be a varied role, and he stayed with Cerestar until his retirement.
In his retirement he is still active as part of his local Probus Club, and he enjoys reading, particularly murder mysteries, and watching the detective programmes on the television. Travelling this journey with him was his wife, Honore, whom he married in 1958 and they have three children and seven grandchildren. His daughters Michelle and Sandra live in Sale and Flixton and his son Glyn lives in Germany, and Trevor and the lodge brethren were very pleased to see Glyn at the celebration evening.
Masonically, Trevor was proposed into Westbourne Lodge No 7257 by J Taylor, a family friend. He became WM of Westbourne Lodge from 1991 to 1993 and its charity steward in 1995. Westbourne Lodge amalgamated in 2003 and he became part of the new, and aptly named, Pheonix Lodge No 1730 on 8 March 2007, but not before compiling the Westbourne Lodge 50 years celebration historical document.
In Phoenix Lodge, he took the offices of senior deacon for two years and junior deacon for three years, joining Davyhulme Lodge on 21 November 2024 when Phoenix Lodge handed in its warrant. In recognition of this commitment to Freemasonry in the Province of West Lancashire, he was appointed to the acting rank of ProvSGD in May 1995 and then promoted to PPGSuptWks in 2007.
Outside of the Province of West Lancashire, Trevor is Past Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of British Freemasons in Germany and a member of Lodge Niederrhein 892 of that Constitution which gives his celebrations a truly international dimension.
Following the ceremony at the social board, Stuart rose adding his congratulations to those of our Provincial Grand Master Mark Matthews. Trevor, clearly moved, then responded giving his thanks to all who had helped him over the years and particularly to the members of Davyhulme Lodge, thus completing a fascinating and well-deserved evening and friendly and convivial social board!