Story of first female freemason - a Cork woman - set for TV series

A STORY that has been more than 300 years waiting to be told has been optioned by a Cork production company for a TV series.

The strange but true story of the first ever female freemason was published last year as a historical fiction novel, as it was impossible to identify all the characters that make up the intriguing story.

Entitled Doneraile Court: The Story Of The Lady Freemason, by New York-based Kathleen Aldworth Foster, it is a cracking tale.

Once a pilot episode is written within the next six months, it will be taken to market to be sold as a series, says CEO of Great Island Productions, Mark Kenny.

The book relates how 17-year1old Elizabeth St Leger, living with her family in the Georgian mansion, Doneraile Court, fell asleep in the library one night and woke up to sounds from the next room.

Repairs were being carried out to the wall between the library and the lodge room. Elizabeth took a brick out of the wall and found herself looking at an initiation ceremony.

Realising she had seen something she ought not to have witnessed, she tried to escape but the family butler, standing guard in the hallway, caught her and brought her to the attention of her father and brothers who had been taking part in the ceremony along with a few other men.

“The story goes that the men debated killing Elizabeth,” says Kathleen. “But one man stood up and said he had another option. He said: ‘Let’s make her the first ever female freemason’.”

Five months later, Elizabeth wed her saviour, Richard Aldworth of Newmarket, and became Elizabeth St Leger Aldworth.

Kathleen’s interest in this story was sparked in 2000. She was visiting the pyramids in Giza in Egypt when she met a man who told her that she shared the Aldworth name with a female freemason. The man subsequently sent her a book, The Hiram Key. It was the first book on freemasonry that Kathleen ever read.

Some six years later, on a genealogy trip to Ireland, a taxi driver heard Kathleen talking to her father about Elizabeth St Leger Aldworth. The driver said this woman’s house was still standing in Doneraile. Excited, Kathleen took up his offer to drive them to Doneraile Court.

At the time, it wasn’t open to the public. But Kathleen probed and established a family link to Elizabeth. Her father’s beloved grandmother was Kathleen Aldworth.

My mother came into the family and also fell in love with her, so much so that she named me after her....I have since given the Aldworth middle name to my two daughters.

Kathleen became intrigued with freemasonry.

“When I first heard about the story of Elizabeth, my first question was why in the world would the men want to kill her? Why would her father have accepted that possibility? I wanted to know as much as I could. It took a very long time.”

So fascinated was Kathleen that she looked into joining a co-masonry mixed gender group in New York.

“But I felt that if I did that, I would take my oath too seriously and would never finish my book.” There is a perception that freemasons are well off and anti-Catholic. But Kathleen says they do a lot of charity work and in the U.S, they are not the preserve of the moneyed classes and come from various religious backgrounds.

Elizabeth St Leger Aldworth was known as a very benevolent philanthropist. I have heard that, today, the freemasons refer to themselves as the oldest self-help group in the world. They’re very misunderstood. They’re all about making good men better and being the best versions of themselves.

Kathleen used to be a reporter for Fox News, a job that took her to warzones all over the world. She reported from Bosnia, she spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was in Israel several times, and she also reported on natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes in Haiti.

“I spent 12 years pretty much away from home,” she said.

Now working in PR, Kathleen says there are times when she misses journalism. “The war in Ukraine was one of those moments.”

But when a colleague who was a good friend was killed while working as a cameraman in Ukraine, Kathleen realised that, had she been there with him, she too could have lost her life. The friend was Pierre Zakrzewski, who grew up in Ireland. His father was Polish and his mother was French but he was raised in Dublin.

Kathleen’s reporting in danger zones meant there were times “when my life flashed before my eyes.

“I could have been standing right next to Pierre and been hit if I’d been in Ukraine.”

Now, Kathleen is “delighted” that so many people are recognising the power of the story of the first female freemason.

“I’m thrilled that Great Island Productions are so dedicated to telling stories and producing programming that can be made in Cork.”

Mark Kenny thinks it’s a fantastic story. Will it be filmed on location at Doneraile Court?

“The exteriors will definitely be shot there. There might be some restrictions from the authorities about using the interior. It’s likely that we’ll build sets that would replicate the interior.”

All going well, the story of the first lady freemason – a Cork woman - should be on a television screen some time in the near future.