The Ashmole of Lichfield Lodge was founded to cater for the increasing number of men seeking to join freemasonry in Lichfield and also provide a lodge for those men whose business took them away from home during the week. St John's Lodge, which was the existing lodge in Lichfield, had served the City well for over one hundred years, but it met on a Wednesday, being the early closing day in the City and there were many brethren moving into the area who were looking for a weekend lodge. Hence Ashmole Lodge meets on a Friday evening to meet this need.
The Lodge was consecrated in February 1972 originally as the Elias Ashmole Lodge, named after Elias Ashmole who was born in the City in 1617. He was a man of great distinction and an ardent Royalist at the time of the Civil War. Following the Restoration in 1660 he was made Windsor Herald and became a Fellow of the Royal Society, receiving University Honours. From then on he devoted himself to heraldic and antiquarian studies which culminated in the founding of the Oxford Museum, now known as the Ashmolean. He is particularly important to freemasonry as he is the first recorded initiate into speculative masonry, entering the order at Warrington in 1646.
The name of the Lodge was changed to The Ashmole of Lichfield Lodge in 1977, to maintain its connection with Lichfield when it moved to the Masonic Rooms in Tamworth. It did, and always has provided a Lodge for men whose occupation took them away from Lichfield during the week. This was well established from the start, when among the founders of the Lodge in 1972, were brethren who were initiated in Malaya and India as well as other parts of the British Isles.
In fact, of the 18 founders, only 9 were initiated in Staffordshire, of which 6 were members of St John's Lodge.