The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) was found on the 4th of March 1824. To celebrate this anniversary we arranged for a quarter peal to be rung at Great Gransden. Some of the ringers are regular supporters or members of the RNLI and all were happy to take part.
Two of the ringers had not rung a quarter peal at Great Gransden before and this presented a good opportunity for them. We rang 1296 changes of Cambridge Surprise Minor, which took 44 minutes. Another important footnote was that it was Sheila George’s 950th quarter peal and her 266th on the bells. Well done Sheila!
The ringers were: 1. Charlotte Gamble (St Neots), Sheila George (Gt Gransden), Vanessa Webster (Cherry Hinton), Ann Abraham (St Ives), Roger Beaman (Holywell), Phillip George (Gt Gransden) (conductor).
Thank you everyone for taking part in this celebratory ringing.
L-R: Charlotte, Sheila, Vanessa, Ann, Roger, Phillip
The snowdrops are in full bloom and the garden beckons. I can’t wait to get out there but it has been so wet, everything is saturated. I can still do some useful jobs inside and one which needed doing was the high level cleaning in the ringing room at church.
I took the folding ladder and fitted Henry with his extra long pipe. David footed the ladder and held Henry while I ventured to the heights with vacuum nozzel in hand. There were quite a lot of cobwebs up there and fluff from the bell ropes had accumulated around the rope bosses. We also cleaned the light shades which thankfully just clipped off and on again.
This was last done in 2015 so it was probably a little overdue but were looking good bow!
We had a full house last Thursday and it was lovely to see everyone. The practice started at 7.00pm for Sheila and me to teach Josh handbells. We’re working through a plain course of Plain Bob Minor.
People began to arrive before 7.30 and through the evening Sheila G kept us busy with call changes, Plain Hunt, Grandsire and Plain Bob Minor. It was a good evening and afterwards David received two independant comments from prople saying how much they enjoyed hearing the bells. That’s really encouraging and we hope to continue to make a sound over the village.
On Sunday lots were away and we only rang the back five bells. Nevertheless, our ringing was very good and enjoyable. We had a young audience watching from the nave of the church as they waited to come up and use the room for Sunday School. Of course, we had to ring the bells down first!
The winter months are a little quiet. We still hold tied bell practises on Wednesday mornings and our normal practice on a Thursday evening. We are looking forward to our annual general meeting in March and our Spring outing in April.
In the meantime we decided to take advantage of the winter season to carry out some drone photography. There are some advantages in doing this at this time of year because there is no foliage to hide things. The disadvantage was that on the day the weather was cloudy although there was a milky sun and it was fairly bright.
The control processes are very interesting and in accordance with the CAA. The drone comes with its own helipad and instructions are given on take off and landing for safety reasons. We also notified nearby neighbours so that they were aware of the work.
We will use the photgraphs and videos in future stories about Great Gransden ringers. The drone operator was Mark George. Mark is a lisenced CAA drone pilot .
Here is a sample of his work. It shows Great Gransden church from Church Street. The drone gradually climbs higher to a position above the church.
The first tied bell session of the year was held at Nutbells on the 10th of January. This year we held a simple quiz on Call Changes and Plain Hunt on 5 taken from the Learning the Ropes training scheme. Most questions were answered correctly and there was some useful discussion around some of the topics.
It was a light-hearted gathering and we’re looking forward to recommencing in the tower on Wednesday the 17th.
On Thursday the 11th we held our second tower bell practice of the year. Unfortunately, there were only six in attendance due to holidays and work committments. We rang Plain Hunt and Call Changes before cutting the practice short at 8.30pm.
Before the practice three of us rang handbells. Josh had his first lesson. We practised Rounds on all pairs, then had some place making and dodging practice. The next step was to ring Plain Hunt on six with Josh ringing 5/6, which was very nicely rung. Next week – Plain Hunt on the other pairs!
Great Gransden ringers and friends held their Christmas party on Saturday 30th December at Nutbells. Everyone brought food and we enjoyed a starter, main and sweet course. Fifteen of us shared two rooms with instructions from tower captain, Sheila, to swop places after the main course.
The handbells came out with several having a go at ringing Rounds on ten. David’s quiz entertained us as usual – resulting in a draw between the two teams, the prize clinched by the kitchen team in the tie breaker!
David presented Sheila and Phillip with personalised coffee mugs bearing the Great Gransden ringers’ logo, as a token of appreciation on behalf of the ringers, for their tuition and help during the year.
Personal note – thank you all the ringers who attend every week and to family members who also support our ringing. PG
We are excited to organise visits as a team to other practices. During the summer we ventured along the A14 west of Huntingdon to ring at Great Catworth on their practice night. We arranged this with tower captain Geoff Burn and were warmly welcomed and had a lovely evening. We invited them to visit us and this was arranged for Thursday the 23rd of November.
Nine of their ringers were able to come along which meant that we had eighteen in the ringing room, but we managed to organise ourselves and take it in turns to sit down! Catworth ringers are at a similar stage to us, ringing Plain Hunt, Plain Bob, a little bit of Grandsire and call changes and we were able to help each other out.
During the evening we rang all these methods several times with mixed bands, and call changes were conducted by the two young ringers present.
At half time we handed out the sweets, and notices were given for each tower about forthcoming events. Sheila George kept us all busy throughout the evening and we finished the practice with a lovely ring down in peal.
Everyone enjoyed the practice and Geoff said afterwards, “I think it’s useful to visit other towers’ practice nights as I find it opens my eyes to other ways of approaching ringing!”. We all feel the benefits of these visits and will arrange some more in 2024.
Always looking for opportunities, a gap in the diary when key ringers were available allowed us to organise a Grandsire Doubles workshop on Saturday 11th November 2023. It had been on the cards for a while and we were pleased to be able to ‘tick this one off’.
We ring Grandsire on practice nights but our band alone is not quite strong enough to move forward with it. Friends from St Neots and Caxton came along for an hour or so to give David and Sheila Prest some concentrated ringing to consolidate bobs and singles. Each rang four extents and we managed to end the session by ringing Morrison’s 240. It was a really good afternoon with much progress being made.
With nine of us all told we were able to take turns in sitting out, or standing behind, conducting and ringing the tenor.
As it was Remembrance Day we didn’t want to practice with half muffed bells in case we fired out in any of the touches. On one or two occasions we did have to start again and this justified our choice of ringing on silenced bells using simulated sound.
After the practice Sheila and David invited us to their house to enjoy tea and cake by the fireside. The apres-ring is always very pleasant, a time to relax after the hard work!
A lovely afternoon was had by all and special thanks go to Catherina, Dave, Ruth and Elinor for supporting us.
After tea we took off the clapper stays and fitted the muffles ready for ringing half muffled on Sunday the 12th
Josh has been ringing for 10 months and making good progress, moving on to ringing Plain Hunt on the treble. He is ready to go on to ring the treble to Plain Bob Doubles and to ring the tenor behind but needs a very steady band to help with this, and a lighter tenor bell.
So, Sheila and I arranged to visit Little Eversden (7 1/4 cwt) on Friday the 27th of October (during half term) and we invited some ringing friends from the Cambridge District to help.
The ringing started with an excellent ring up in peal with Josh on the 2nd. The first piece of ringing was call changes, which he called, and impressed the others. He then rang the 2nd to Plain Hunt Minor, the treble to a 120 of Plain Bob Doubles and the tenor of two occasions to the same. Sheila was looking after him giving advice and helping him to see the bells. We finished with more call changes to Queens and back, again, called by Josh.
His ringing during the one-hour session was very good and the experience of the other ringers was highly beneficial.
Our very grateful thanks to Elinor Cole, Becca Glazier, Tom Ridgman, Tony Probert (T/C at Eversden) and Dave Hawkins. We enjoyed an excellent afternoon – and well done Josh!
We were lucky with the weather having avoided two days of heavy rain and wind. Saturday the 14th of October 2023 was cool but sunny as we set off on our forty minute drive to north Bedfordshire.
We arrived at Bletsoe in good time and were met by the tower captain. The bells wre re-hung in 2015 and the ringing room refurbished. The 11cwt six are lovely bells and the prime piece of ringing was a plain course of Cambridge Surprise Minor. We also rang Plain Hunt, Plain Bob Doubles and call changes.
Bletsoe bells were recast by Robert Taylor of St Neots in 1786. The church wanted a lighter set. The tenor at our church had cracked in the same year and was also in the bell foundry. Robert Taylor and his foreman Islip Edmunds noticed that the Bletsoe tenor bell was an exact match for the Gransden one and decided to swop them over, so saving on the cost of recasting. Taylor incised his name on the bell and Gransden accepted it as new!
So, Great Gransden have got Bletsoe’s old tenor. Whilst visiting Phillip invited Bletose ringers to visit Great Gransden to ring their old bell and it is hoped that this can be arranged soon.
Our next tower was Riseley, a 13 1/4 cwt six where is was locally declared that they were the best six in the area! We didn’t agree with this claim but had some decent ringing on them in the form of a 120 Stedman Doubles, amongst other tunes.
We then moved to the Fox & Hounds public house for lunch, which we had pre-ordered. We were made welcome and served nicely by the staff. A side order of chips was enough to feed about six others as Josh shared them out amongst the company of ringers.
Having sought permission from the staff, three of us rang a 120 Plain Bob Minor on handbells which was acknowledged with applause from everyone in earshot.
Our final tower was Sharnbrooke, a pleasant litte eight (9 3/4 cwt) where Grandsire Triples didn’t quite make it, but we had call changes and Plain Hunt 7. Our prime piece of ringing here was 100 Plain Bob Doubles with 768 behind, and very nicely struck too.
It was a really enjoyable day of fellowship and ringing. Our thanks to the towers for allowing us to visit and we look forward to our spring 2024 outing – wherever that may be!
Great Gransden Bell Ringers 