Women flock to join the Freemasons

It took 300 years for the second woman to be initiated into an Irish Freemason lodge, but now it appears the floodgates are to open.

A little over a month ago Caroline Wollk, a retired teacher from Kilgarvan, Co Kerry, became the first woman in Ireland to be initiated into a lodge since Elizabeth St Leger, daughter of Viscount Doneraile, in 1712.

Since then, lodges in Ireland were a male-only preserve, until Wolfe Tone Lodge No 3 in Ballincollig, Cork, changed all that.