The prime qualification for admission into the Royal Arch is to be a Master Mason, of at least four weeks standing, in a Lodge under the United Grand Lodge of England, or a Lodge under a Grand Lodge recognised by it.

As in all other Masonic Orders, you will need a proposer and seconder who are members of the Chapter in which you seek to be exalted. If your Lodge does not have a Royal Arch Chapter attached to it, it will probably have an arrangement with a local Chapter. Check your Lodge summons which may give details of either the Chapter attached to it, a Chapter to which it supplies candidates or a member of the Lodge who is a Royal Arch Mason who will assist members interested in joining the Royal Arch.

If there are no details on your Lodge summons, you can usually identify the members of your Lodge who are Royal Arch Masons as they will normally wear the jewel of the Order with their Craft regalia. They will be delighted to be approached about membership.

If all that fails, you can contact the Royal Arch Membership Team by completing the enquiry form. 

Further information can also be found on the "Why Join" page.

Royal Arch is an Order in Freemasonry indissolubly linked with Craft Freemasonry. The first documented evidence of a ‘Royal Arch’ comes from Ireland in 1743; it seems likely that this was an ‘added extra’ worked within Craft Lodges in England, Ireland and Scotland for many years. Thus it came to be regarded, by the Antients in England, as a fourth Degree in Freemasonry. The Moderns, on the other hand, do not appear to have officially recognised the Degree at all (with a few exceptions), leading in due course, to completely separate Royal Arch Chapters. These differences were partially resolved at the Union of the Grand Lodges in 1813, by a compromise: the new United Grand Lodge of England declared the Royal Arch to be an official and accepted part of ‘Pure and Antient Freemasonry’.