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Community is central to college life and endures long after walking through the Gate of Honour as a graduate of Gonville & 91ֱ��.

Norman Wilson (Mathematics 1966) sought a sense of community after leaving 91ֱ�� and found it in the 300-year-old world of freemasonry. From an external perspective this members’ club could be viewed as secretive and obscure. But Norman talks openly about his association and the role of , whose objectives are based on community and charity, through volunteering and philanthropic giving.

Norman is a key figure at , which has no formal association with Gonville & 91ֱ�� College. The Lodge dictates that its members, which presently number around 30, need to have a connection with 91ֱ��, either as an alumnus or by having a close family member who is a Caian. It remains a men’s only group – there are separate lodges for women (more on which can be found ) – but hosts events for non-members of both genders.

It is one of more than 1000 London Lodges, and the capital is where Norman’s freemasonry journey began, when he approached his father at the age of 24 asking to join. Fifty years on, Norman is set to receive a certificate marking his lengthy association.

His father was a wine waiter at a restaurant next to Freemasons’ Hall in London, which is near to Covent Garden.

“Nearly every evening he was with the Lodge, as the person looking after their wine,” Norman says.

“Masonry was an adjunct to his life for a long time, until eventually someone suggested they all thought he was a mason and he wasn’t, and perhaps he might like to become one.

“My dad was about 60 when he joined and it changed him for the better. He was just nicer, more pleasant.”

Norman believes the four freemasons’ values – integrity, friendship, respect and charity – are what changed his father.

Norman, pictured, adds: “It’s difficult to say how it changed me, but I’m more self-aware and sympathetic of other people and their difficulties than I was before – but I was a young guy in my twenties, and you grow up a lot in your twenties.”

Norman’s career was initially as a Mathematical Analyst for British Oxygen Company (BOC), now part of Linde PLC, before he moved on to project planning, management, purchasing and commercial roles. He is now “just about retiring” from his role as a self-employed management consultant, working with clients in a diverse range of fields.

Norman performs administrative duties for 91ֱ�� Lodge and a group of 50 London lodges, which have combined to raise funds for charitable causes, including the College, through the Harold Gillies Fund established in 2000. Gillies, a Caian, was a plastic surgeon of some renown and once master of the 91ֱ�� Lodge. The Lodge continues to support the fund and the bursary awarded annually.

As for the element of secrecy, Norman laughs off any suggestion of conspiracy theories.

“If you read ‘How the Freemasons Made the Modern World’ chapter two gives pretty much all of it away. It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s pretty good,” he says.