February 2025 Update

The usual routines of practices and service ringing have been followed during the last few weeks .

Tied bell practices have included dodgy call changes, which we have yet to perfect, Plain Hunt of 5 and call changes. There is always some theory too, making use of the white boards.

We have recently welcomed visitors. On Sunday the 16th February, Martin Ellis (Chapel en le Frith) rang with us for service. Martin was staying locally for the weekend and took the opportuity of grabbing the tower. He had pre-arraned this by contacting us through this website and we are pleased that the syste of communication works. Martin joined us for call changes and we rang two sets. Firstly Sheila G called 60 on Thirds, and then Phillip called a composition of 40 changes. Martin’s reaction was “Impressive”, and we were pleased to receieve this compliment.

On Thursday 20th Liz Harvey and her son, Oliver (Sapcote), joined us for practice and we had a very enjoyable 90 minutes ringing our usual repertoire of Plain Bob, Grandsire and St Martins. We finished with some call changes and had a very nice rng down in peal, when both Josh (11) and Oliver (11) joined in. It was great to have two young ringers in the tower!

We are constantly inspecting the bell installation and recently identified some minor wear on one of the rollers on the ground pully of the tenor bell. This has been caused by 25 years of ringing, but is not excessive. It is a twin roller block and the roller showing wear is the backstroke one. This gets more rope contact than the handstroke and so is more susceptible to ‘grooving’.

It was quite a quick job to swop over the rollers so that the unworn one is now on the backstroke side of the box. Inspection of those on bells No 4 and 5 are showing similar wear and we will change these over during the year.

Our next immediate project is to make some bell mufflers (using motor bike tyres), to use instead of wooden clapper stays when he hold tied bell practices. Glyn Williams and I are investigating this – report later!