Clodagh Finn: Inside the secret world of the first lady Freemason

US journalist and author Kathleen Aldworth Foster reading a 300-year-old letter written by Elizabeth Aldworth, the first lady Freemason and a distant relative, in the lodge room at Doneraile Court in Cork.

Come with me now, this is special. We’ve been invited to stand in the very spot where Corkwoman Elizabeth St Leger Aldworth discovered the secret rites of a Freemason initiation ceremony some 300 years ago — and was almost put to death because of it.

Her great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, artist Mary St Leger, is here, standing in the library of Doneraile Court, Cork, recalling the night a young Elizabeth spied on the adjoining lodge room in November 1712.