Broached Thurnel.

This is one of the unsolved puzzles of Freemasonry, not a matter of any considerable importance but one of great curiosity and one to challenge the ability of Masonic antiquaries French charts and tracing boards of the early 18th century and some English ones depicted, among other symbols and tools, a cubical stone, rising on top to a square tower or pyramid, sometimes having a small axe or hatchet blade driven right into the apex as if to split the whole object vertically. A Masonic Catechism of about the same time has the following: ”Q. What are the Immoveable Jewels? A. Trasel Board, Rough Ashlar, and Broached Thurnel. Q. What are their uses? A. A Trasel Board for the Master to draw his Designs upon, the Rough Ashlar for the Fellow-Craft to try their Jewels upon, and the Broached Thurnel for the Enter’d ’Prentice to learn to work upon.”

Presumably, the cubic-pyramidal figure was the Broached Thurnel, for there was nothing else depicted for the name to apply to, nor was there any other name in the Catechism to apply to that odd figure. The problem seems not to be eased by the fact that the Perfect (smooth, finished, or polished) Ashlar was gradually substituted for the Broached Thurnel, and gradually the name disappeared, for it did not show up in Preston’s lectures. The way in which words were corrupted as to both spelling and pronunciation undoubtedly accounts for many lost and obscured trails of the past, and this is probably another example. Compare Trasel Board in the above quotation, meaning Trestle Board or Tracing Board; Tesselated Border and Tasselated Border; and Indented Tessel and Indented Tarsel.

We find in lodge minutes of 1753 brooch and trunell, and, in other places brooched ornel, ornell, urnell, urnal, and ovall. Strange to say, someone has suggested that these last named supposed corruptions are the real names and thurnel, the corruption; and it is said that ornel, urnall, etc. was the name of a kind of white building stone, to prove which, the building accounts of Rochester Castle for 1368 and a letter to the Lord Mayor of London in 1509-10 are cited.

Dr. Oliver (Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry) states that the broached thurnel is the rough ashlar, but that is inconsistent with the above-quoted Catechism which contrasted the two. Parker’s Glossary of Terms in Architecture states that brooch or broche is an old English word for a spire, especially, a spire springing from a tower with no intervening parapet. Thurnel is from the French turnelle a turret or little tower. Hence, the Broached Thurnel was a spired turret, and was a model on which apprentices might learn the principles of their art. One difficulty with that solution is that the French, themselves, called the stone in question la pierre cubique a pointe (the cubical stone with a point).

E. L. Hawkins quoted from A. Q. C., Vol. XII, p. 205, where G. W. Speth quoted from the Imperial Dictionary as follows: ”Broach, in Scotland, a term among masons, signifying to rough hew. Broached Work in Scotland, a term among masons signifying work on stones that are rough-hewn, and thus distinguished from Ashlar or polished work. Broaching-Thurmal, Thurmer, Turner, names given to the chisels by which broached work is executed.” Speth, therefore, suggested that the Broached Thurnel was a chisel for the apprentice to learn to work with.

The New England Dictionary defines broached as meaning stone, chiseled with a broach, a narrow pointed chisel. Robert I. Clegg, who was a mechanical engineer, said that broach applied to the operation of shaping or forming by a special tool, as by forcing a cutting tool through a piece of metal to make a triangular hole. This work is called broaching and the tools to do such special work are called broaches. Charles E. Funk of the editorial staff of Funk and Wagnalls’ New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, upon consulting at least 15 dictionaries, some dating back to 1643, found no such word as thurnel, thurmal, or thurmer, but did find tournelle, tornel, turnelle, tornelle, tournel, and tornel, all meaning a spired turret. But he admitted that such would not fit the Masonic Catechism, which assigned a rough ashlar to the Fellow Craft and a finely finished stone to the Apprentice. He then suggested the possibility that th was a transformation of f, and n of m, so that the object in question was really a broached formel or former.

It seems quite evident that broached is one of the words in the English language which have had various meanings at different times and places and some of which have different meanings at the same time in different places, and that thurnel and variations of it are corruptions of one original, but which one cannot now be determined. When to those are added the facts that, in the early 18th century, spelling was not uniform and many words and even proper names were changing form; that then and for many years previously, symbols were put into the Masonic rituals (at that time mostly catechisms) which were either not well and appropriately fitted into place or were changed or distorted by subsequent users, the text often being transmitted orally, and sometimes descending to doggerel, it is easy to see how and why broached thurnel would have a somewhat incongruous symbolism in an old catechestical dialogue and its true or original meaning would be lost. The fact that it soon disappeared and did not get into the Prestonian lectures of about 1772 indicates that it either was not then understood or was regarded as a useless Masonic symbol.