This year's festival is being organised by the Public Schools' Installed Masters' Lodge, No. 9077 at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.

The Royal Masonic School for Girls (RMS) is one of the oldest girls’ schools in the country. Founded by Chevalier Ruspini in 1788, the School's original purpose was to educate the daughters of Freemasons who were unable to support their families through death, illness or disability. The School started with fifteen pupils and a matron in Somers Place in East London and moved twice within London until it finally settled in the magnificent grounds of Rickmansworth Park, Hertfordshire, in 1934.

With 315 acres of stunning grounds, Rickmansworth Park once surrounded a stately home. The School was purpose built on its site, making the most of its generous land. With over 3000 trees, rolling grassland and exceptional facilities, the staff and students are indeed blessed to live and work in such a beautiful place. When the School was designed, the size, scale and quality of the buildings was generous to a fault; come and visit the acoustically magnificent chapel with its organ, the impressive Great Hall and the Dining Hall. The Garth is home to the boarding houses and a well-equipped Resource Centre and beyond is a state of the art Sports and Fitness Centre.

The School now has 928 pupils ranging from aged 2 to 18. The pupils are divided between Pre-School, Ruspini House, which caters for boys and girls aged 2 to 4. Cadogan House, a Pre-Prep and Preparatory Department, welcomes girls aged 4 to 11. Hind House, the Sixth Form Centre, offers our most senior girls university-style teaching and learning facilities as well as plenty of space for relaxation. Though RMS has evolved over the years, some traditions still remain, such as Drill. RMS girls perform the School Drill three times a year. Imagine, 180 girls from the ages of 11-18 (with one exception) performing a twenty minute routine of callisthenics and marching to music with no spoken instructions. Swedish Drill was popular in schools in the 1880s and forms the basis of the RMS tradition which dates back to 1876. Today it is the only school in the country to perform this impressive routine and a place in the Drill Team is highly sought after by the girls. The routine is based on height order and so each year the girls have to re-learn their part as their height, and therefore their position, change within the team.

More information about RMS and the history of the wonderful school, can be read here - https://www.rmsforgirls.org.uk/