Quarter Peal Band – Sheila P, Sheila G, Catherina, David G, Phillip, David P
About half an hour in and a group from the Cambridge Ramblers came into church and many of them stood and watched us ringing. I waved from the ringing room.
They were still there when the QP came round and I immediately went down and asked if any of them would like to come up into the ringing room. (We always do this). Word quickly got around to some who had gone outside and in the end all of them accepted the invitation. With instructions to leave bags downstairs and not to touch the ropes, about 15 or so climbed the 12 stairs.
The ringers immediately went into ‘host mode’ and the room was full of chatter about how we ring and how bells work etc.
After a while we rang some call changes to Queens and back to give them some ringing room experience. They were, to a person, impressed, several saying that it had made their day.
The most important things coming out of this were that a former ringer said he wanted to return, and another person said they would like to take it up.
That’s what I call a Result!!!
Now, the excercise may never see them again, but you never know when chance meetings will generate interest, even if its just giving people a new experience.
My thanks to the ringers for helping, and for a jolly nice quarter peal.
We had a super day on Saturday 26th April on our springtime mini-outing to Northants for fifteen ringers and friends. Three towers visited, ringing mostly call changes.
Warkton (6. 8cwt) where the east end of the church was rebuilt in 1754 to commemorate the Montagu family. Greeted by noisy sheep adjacent to the churchyard. Bells were tricky for some due to very long ropes and longish draught. Local team has some new learners with a training scheme. Grandsire Doubles and Stedman Doubles were our exhibition pieces.
Brigstock (8. 13 3/4cwt) ground floor ring. Church of Saxon origin with nice original architectural features. Lovely to meet up with Linda Ellison, former ringer at Gt Gransden. Very long ropes and low sallies required many knots but Grandsire Doubles featured on the back six.
Lunch was taken at the Duke Arms in Woodford. Good pub grub (ordered in advance) and a warm welcome; and they allowed us to ring handbells in the bar where we rattled off a couple of 120s of Plain Bob Minor.
Final tower was Woodford, a pleasant short walk from the pub where we enjoyed panoramic views over the Nene valley. One of our ringers reported hearing a cookoo, alas, now seemingly absent from South Cambs!
Bells, (8. 14cwt), an augmentation by Taylors in 2000 and we immediately noticed how odd the trebles are in tone and tuning! Grandsire 5 and St Clements on the back six were our change-ringing pieces here. No local band but a monthly Tuesday night S Major practice is held.
Lovely weather, pleasant countryside, good pub and good company. Special thanks to Tricia for organising the towers and pub lunch for us – much appreciated.
Easter tide is always a good time to have a spring clean in the ringing room. Although we run the vacuum cleaner around it every month or so, periodically it benefits from other changes too.
In the winter the tower west window is drafty and we put up our ‘winter curtain’. Its always nice to remove this in the spring and store it for the summer because it allows more light into the room making it bright and airy. And this year we have had a slight re-arrangement of photographs on the walls just to make some subtle changes.
We are all set for the new season and we have plans for further changes which I hope to be able to report on in due course!
On Easter Sunday we had six ringers in the tower. Tower Captain, Sheila George set us to ring call changes and as there were no spare ringers she called the West Country touch of 60 on Thirds. We set off at a good pace and soon settled into a good rythm. This piece of ringing is about 20 minutes long and everyone worked hard at keeping the rythm and pace. It was a very good piece of ringing, enough to bring a smile to my face!! Well done everyone, it was very suitable for Easter Sunday.
On Maundy Thursday, as is tradition, we held our annual general meeting. The tower officers were re-elected, namely, Tower Captain, Sheila George, Deputy Tower Captain, David Prest, Secretary/Treasurer and Steeple Keeper, PhillipGeorge.
Sheila had written a report summarising our activities during 2024 which included ringing for weddings, quarter peals and on Sundays, practices, a funeral and two tower outings. We always have a full diary of ringing throughout the year and this years plans are equally engaging. They include a spring outing, ringing for the 80th anniversary of VE Day, and in June we have some visitors from Arizona who contacted us to request a tour of the tower. Wow, that’s exciting, we always welcome visitors, ringers or not, from home and abroad.
We’ll now settle into our late spring/summer routines and there will be lots to report.
Our youngest ringer, Josh, is currently learning how to ring Plain Bob Doubles on No2 bell. He is already proficient ringing the treble bell and to help keep his skill level up we organise an occasional quarter peal for him.
The Easter school holidays were a suitable time to arrange one because we could fit it in during a weekday. And so it was, on Monday the 7th April four of us, myself, Sheila G, Hazel and Josh trecked over to Hilton for a 10.00am meet up with ringing friends Elinor Cole and Tom Ridgman.
As well as being arranged for Josh we took the opportunity to invite Hazel to ring the tenor, which was the first time for her. The ringing took 42 minutes and was very satisfactory. A local resident, also a ringer, said how pleasing it was to hear the bells and congratulated Josh and Hazel on their achievement.
Great Gransden ringers had the pleasure and privilege of hosting the Huntingdon District meeting today 15th March 2025.
Ringing was from 3.00pm when the bells were beautifully raised in peal. The ringing room soon filled up and ringing master, Andrew Smith, made sure of a varied menu of ringing. Methods included Rounds, call changes, Plain Hunt, Plain Bob Doubles, a lovely touch of Grandsire doubles, a course of Cambridge Minor and three courses of St Clements. Unfortunately an attempt at London was unsuccessful.
Several ringers were visiting for the first time, with supervised novices ringing very well indeed. The total attendance was 24.
Tea, prepared by the local ringers, was served at 4.30pm in the lovely Great Gransden Reading Room, and this was followd by a short business meeting, during which six new members of the Association were elected. Congratulations to all.
The District Committee has planned a full ringing schedule for the year to cater for all abilities, and we were encouraged to attend when we can.
Thank you all for coming, it was a very enjoyable afternoon.
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.
Tied bell practice on 19th February 25
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.
Wear can be seen on the nearest roller
Checking the bearing
Pulley block in situ
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!
With Christmas behind us we are back in the tower for our normal weekly practices and will soon be looking forward to the spring and new ringing challenges. The year has already started well with Tricia ringing her first quarter peal. This was on Monday the 6th January when we decided to hop over the border to Potton in Bedfordshire, and nice little 8cwt ring. Tricia rang the tenor to Plain Bob Doubles. Josh rang the treble and it was only his third quarter peal, so it was useful all round experience for both of them. Help from Elinor and Tom made up the band.
Tricia needs to ring one more quarter peal, this time on the treble, to gain her level 3 trainibng certificate in the Learning the Ropes scheme.
Quarter peal band at Potton, Beds
Our first Wednesday tied bell practice on the 8th was the traditional theory session held in the warm at Nutbells. The subject was “Why do we call bobs?” A rather detailed explanation was given which confused everyone, but there were some good points coming out of it and at least we enjoyed coffee and biscuits. The trainer has learned his lesson!
The second tied bell practice was the more conventional one in the tower when we focussed successfully on plain courses of Plain Bob Doubles. We will continue on this line which not only helps ‘inside’ ringers, but those learning the treble too. I think we will make good progress this year.
Our first Thursday practice last week was very successful. We rang Plain Bob, Grandsire and St Martins. We will continue to work on these methods, but we usually make a very good job of call changes too, as demonstrated this Sunday the 19th for service ringing, with thanks to Elinor for coming from ‘out of town’ so that we could ring all six whilst others are away.
We have a couple of important events this year. The first is on the 18th March when we are hosting the Huntingdon District for their meeting in the afternoon. We are also preparing tea for the ringers which will be taken in the Reading Room.
2025 sees the 80th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day and ringers throughout the country have been asked to mark those occasions with ringing and I’m sure that we will join in. The dates are Thursday the 8th May and Friday the 15th August. Perhaps we can recruit new ringers to come and chime the bells, or maybe we could ring some quarter peals?
The Huntingdon District is arranging another ringing festival, this time on Saturday the 21st June. Details are yet to be announced but I hope we can take part and be successful again ringing call changes, as we were last year.
We always look forward to our tower outings and we will soon be looking at the calendar for our spring tour. With Easter being late this year we must be careful to avoid certian dates, but the 12th or 26th April might be suitable options.
Whilst thinking about Easter, Holy Week is the 13th to the 19th of April . We usually hold our tower AGM on Maundy Thursday, so the 17th April might be the date, but we have to agree this between us.
An important job we must do this year is to install an upgrade to our CCTV and monitoring system, having agreed to do this after receiving a legacy in 2024 for tower improvements. We will wait until the warmer weather but we have started to spec out what we require. I think it will be beneficial as our current system takes a long time to ‘warm up’, especially in the cold weather!
We usually have an end of year social event which takes the form of an evening dinner in either the Prests of George’s house. This year Sue and Ant kindly invited us to their new house and we all agreed that a lunch time buffet would fit the bill perfectly.
We decided on 4th January 2025 at 12.30pm and we all brought a variety of delicious foods including salads, meats, quiches, pavlovas and chocolate moousse. Soft drinks, wine and beer was also available. We enjoyed the spacious comfort of Sue and Ant’s home, especially the log burner adding warm atmosphere to a most convivial occasion.
A part-completed jigsaw in another room invited our attention and one of David’s quizes entertained us amidst groans and laughter when we realised how easy some of the anagrams were (all with a Christmas theme).
David presented Sheila and Phillip G with gifts of their favourite QualityStreet chocolates with thanks to them for leading the team during 2024. Phillip thanked Sue and Ant for hosting the event, which was warmly applauded. I seems that a lunch time social received favour amongst all!
We have had a good ‘ringing year’ and some plans have already been made for 2025. In the meantime, here is a video featuring some of our ringing during 2024, and we wish you all a Happy Christmas and New Year.
The Sunday School for over 8 year olds is held in the Ringing Room during the morning church service. I have worked closely with the leaders making sure that everything in the room is safe for the children. One of the leaders asked if it would be possible for the children to visit the rest of the tower one Sunday after the service, and as we always welcome visitors to the tower I was very pleased to arrange this. We set a date for Sunday the 15th December 2024.
I escorted eight children and three supervising adults into the ringing room for a briefing, explaining that they should never touch any of the ropes, or anything in the other rooms either. This was greeted by a reply from one of the boys “..don’t touch anything that you don’t need to touch!” I thought this was a very wise comment and agreed with him!
The first stop was the clock room, which is also a museum displaying obsolete bell fittings. I handed round a small bell clapper from the No 2 bell (pre re-hang in 2000) and asked adults to help in case the children found it to be too heavy. “What is it made of?” one child asked. “Iron”, I said, a special type called wrought iron.” She replied, “I found a pieces of iron once.” The clapper finally found its way back to me and we then headed up to the belfry. This involves a small, supervised, scramble up a runged climb on to the viewing gantry. They all managed this easily. I demonstrated a gentle strike of the tenor and explained which bell was which.
The same boy asked if church bells are ever hung in different churches. I was able to say that usually the answer is ‘no’, but in our case the tenor bell was originally hung in Bletsoe church, and I briefly explained the story. After this exchange we carefully snaked our way down the spiral staircase to the ringing room. The dexterity of the children negotiating access and egress was impressive.
I asked Em to demonstrate raising and lowering a bell so that they could watch this on our CCTV and then, when all was ‘safe’, I invited everyone to chime the bells. They produced a riotous cacophony of sound as they clanged away, trying different bells, with the 5th and tenor occasionally sounding when the older children got the hang of chiming them.
It was delightful to have all these youngsters in the tower, with a lot of excited chatter, chiming our bells as we look forward to Christmas.
Photos taken and published with parental permission
Great Gransden Bell Ringers 