Secrets & Espionage

Where the state kept its secrets and where the spies were made up: the bugged mansion, the bunkers, the headquarters you can only look at, the memorials to the agents, and the addresses of Bond and Smiley.

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Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Inside Freemasons' Hall, the art deco temple of the United Grand Lodge on Great Queen Street, a free museum of regalia, ritual and the secrets that are not really secret.

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Photo by Barry W Hughes/Museum of Freemasonry, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums.

The 1933 hall is the headquarters of English freemasonry and the grandest art deco interior in London - the Grand Temple seats seventeen hundred under a ceiling of mosaics - and the museum off the entrance hall shows aprons, jewels, tracing boards and the Masonic treasures of three centuries with a straight face and a good deal of explanation. The tours take you into the Grand Temple itself; the building doubles as MI5's headquarters in Spooks and as half the period dramas made in London.

Where
60 Great Queen Street, Holborn, WC2B 5AZ
Nearest station
Holborn · 3 min walk

Hours

MondayClosed
Tuesday10:00 – 17:00
Wednesday10:00 – 17:00
Thursday10:00 – 17:00
Friday10:00 – 17:00
Saturday10:00 – 17:00
SundayClosed

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.

Free; the library closes for lunch and on Saturdays. Tours of the Grand Temple are booked separately.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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