Belfry Gossip
Open Door: All hands on deck for a 10am. start on August 13th – someone would bound to be waiting dead on the hour. Refreshments were all laid out in the Tower Room with tables and chairs set out in the church. The television screen was in position at the rear of the church but the faultering picture of the bells up above, caused some problems – even an ex-TV man couldn’t produce a solution. However the gremlin was partly solved a little later into the morning.
A good number of St. Mary’s and non-St. Mary’s folk provided a steady flow of interested visitors. The ringers showed off their skills at ringing while the visitors sat in admiration and even applauded. Some of the more adventurous folk and children were encouraged to have a go at pulling a rope, with some thinking the rope and bell could be controlled immediately. The really young ones were handed a hand bell to ring. John coped admirably with ascending and descending the stone staircase, taking the more adventurous and physically able ones right to the top to see the bells. It’s surprising who did make the climb.
Suitable literature was handed out explaining a little about ringing at St. Mary’s, copies of which are now available on the bookstall at the back of the church. If the success criteria is for added interest – then we succeeded; if for participation and more recruits, then time will tell. Of course we had a visit from the press and the Evening Telegraph accurately reported the morning’s initiative. How about the folk who missed the opportunity – maybe another time?
Chairs and Clocks: On moving into the new ringing chamber in March 2003, we used some of the church chairs with green padding. Recently the opportunity was given to us to exchange these for the chairs with the blue covering. These now blend in with our colour scheme and we feel more colour co-ordinated. Our wall clock had given us years of good service and was reasonably accurate. However Lidl’s had an offer for radio controlled clocks and we now have absolute accuracy, to the second, with our time keeping. Other readings from the clock face give us the temperature, date and phases of the moon – we always wanted to know this in the ringing chamber! The clock rim also has blue markings – co-ordination again.
Friday Weddings: None of us can remember any previous Friday weddings at St. Mary’s. This year we have three, all wanting the bells, one of which being on the Friday before Christmas. This is very reminiscent of years gone by when Christmas and particularly Boxing Day, was a popular time for weddings. With several retired persons in our team, we have been able to muster the necessary ringers.
Holidays: September saw some of the ringers taking holidays in far away places and couldn’t get back to ring for weddings. Spain, South America, France Canada/North America all featured in the list of venues but we managed to retain our commitment to Sunday Service ringing and Sunday evening quarter peals.
Visitors: Recently we have welcomed Jon, who has moved into Higham Ferrers and now joins us on most Friday evenings together with the Higham practices on Tuesday evenings. He has already conducted the odd quarter peal for us. John and Chris Clarke, who learned to ring at Rushden, emigrated to Canada in the 1970’s and came over for our 2003 Golden Jubilee celebrations, recently returned to the U.K. for a ringing tour. They joined us for an excellent September Sunday evening quarter peal of Stedman Triples, before returning to Canada. John is the only ringer to have rung a quarter at Rushden with certain trouser buttons improperly secured.
Battle of Trafalgar: Churches throughout the country have been asked to have their bells rung on Friday October 21st to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. We hope we are able to muster enough ringers for this special commemoration. Did our original 5 bells ring out to celebrate the victorious Battle in 1805? They probably did.
Tintinnabulum
www.stmarysringers.org.uk
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