Our last foray of the year!

Thankfully we missed the torrential rain of Thursday and enjoyed a bright, dry but cool Friday 18th November visiting three towers in the Ely District for our Autumn mini outing.

Meeting at Bottisham first (6 bells, 11cwt) with an interesting access to the ringing room. Then on to Swaffham Bulbeck (8 bells, 10 1/4cwt) and their lovely ringing gallery with open views into the church. Lunch was enjoyed at The 5 Bells PH in Burwell where we enjoyed a leasurely lunch before the short walk to the magnificant church to ring (8 bells, 13cwt).

Our modest repertoire of Rounds and call changes, with touches of Plain Bob Doubles was successfully excercised, with only one or two false starts!

A good day was had by all. Many thanks to Martin Kitson, Lesley Boyle & Gareth Davies, and Dee Smith for allowing us to visit, and David Prest and Sheila George for being Ringing Masters.

District Meeting

A cool, dull, mizzly November day. “Will anyone come to the ringing meeting this afternoon?” “Will everyone decided to stay at home in the warm?” These were the questions Sheila and I asked each other as we made our way to the church tower.

Well, we needn’t have worried – ringers soon appeared. The heating went on in the ringing room and the bells were raised.

During the afternoon about 25 ringers from all parts of the district (inc. Ramsey, St.Neots, Gamlingay, Godmanchester, Fenstanton, Holywell, Huntingdon and St.Ives) took their turn, and the methods rung included Call Changes, PB5 & 6, Oxford TB, Cambridge, Ipswich & London Surprise minor, and St.Clements.

We rang until 4.00pm after which were served refreshing cups of tea with biscuits immediately before a short business meeting.

Great Gransden ringers were thanked for hosting the event and esp to Sheila George for providing the refreshments.

Another very enjoyable afternoon ringing.

Saturday 5th November, 10.00am. Everything is ready to welcome people to our coffee morning – the first time we have embarked on this type of fund raising and PR event.

The handbells have been laid out, the bunting is up, the perpetual overhead slide presentation is running, the kettle is on and we are keen to get going. It started with a trickle of people but soon developed into a steady flow ordering their refreshments.

The biscuit decorating table soon started to attract youngsters as did the handbells, which throughout the morning were rung by complete novices, under the tutelage of Sheila George. Two seasonal tunes had been selected to be rung, Jingle Bells and Good King Wenceslas, both providing gentle entertainment amongst the excited chatter of our visitors. Christmas cards were on sale (designed by Rebecca Banner).

It was good to welcome everyone, and we met a lapsed ringer who we hope will visit us on a Thursday evening practice session.

Our thanks to everyone for supporting our endeavour either by visiting or donating cakes and raffle prizes which helped us raise £270 for our tower fund. In this case raised specifically to pay for our new laptop for the training facility and towards handbell insurance.

This was a really good PR opportunity for ringing, and an excellent morning! Thanks to the team for their hard work, David and Sheila Prest, Hazel Pettit, Tricia Williams, Julia Smith, Sue Taylor and Sheila George.

n.b. all photos of young people are published with permission from their parents.

Sheila and Phillip George were married in Great Gransden church on 7th October 1972. They rang for their own wedding and then a quarter peal band took over ringing 1260 Plain Bob Minor before attending the reception.

Fifty years on the 7th October 2022 they rang another quarter peal. This time with another couple celebrating their Golden Anniversary on the same day.

On Saturday the 8th there were further ringing celebrations when a date touch of 1972 changes was rung, this time including daughter and son in law Rebecca and Mark Banner, and two of our ringing friends Catherina Griffiths and Naomi Laredo. The method rung was Cambridge Surprise Minor.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the King!!

What happens in the bell tower?

After eleven days of mourning Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, bell ringers everywhere will be “getting back to normal”. The muffles will be taken off the clappers and stored ready for our next act of remembrance as our memories of recent days tarry for a while.

During the last week or so we have rung at specific times in the process code-named Operation London Bridge, the guidance on “what to do” when the sovereign dies. Of course, it started as Operation Unicorn because the queen died in Scotland. Although the queen died on the 8th September (D-Day), D-Day was actually assigned as the 9th.

Ringers everywhere were mobilised at short notice and many rang on the 9th at midday to honour Her Majesty. In Great Gransden, as with many other towers, the bells were rung fully muffled but with the tenor “open” at backstroke, meaning that it had only one muffle on the clapper. Tower captain Sheila George organised the ringers so that everyone had equal opportunity to experience this unique and exciting type of ringing. Fully muffled ringing is reserved to mark the death of the sovereign.

Accession is instantaneous. As soon as Queen Elizabeth II died, Prince Charles became King Charles III. Although in mourning, the country had to mark the accession. Proclamations were made, first in London on the 10th September and a day later in the provinces, where Royal guidance advised us to ring on Sunday 11th from 4.00pm, and the Gransden ringers did so, ringing on open bells in celebration.

The days following the proclamation continued with end to end “mono-tely”, as ordinary life seemed to be on hold and there was an endless commentary on tv by many presenters saying the same things time and time again! The “Queue”, as it became known, to Westminster Hall where Her Majesty was lying in state was several miles long and could be seen from space! Ringers continued marking the queen’s death with muffled ringing, and in Great Gransden there was eagre anticipation of our next special ringing as emails were exchanged to coordinate the team.

Monday 19th was our final act of remembrance. We rang from 10.00am for 45 minutes. Once again Sheila had organised us and the bells were rung almost continuously. Finally, at 10.45am the tenor was tolled for 15 minutes until the start of the funeral service of Her Majesty.

It has been an extra-ordinary week and an honour to have taken an active part in this moment of our country’s history.

The evenings are drawing in, the weather is a little cooler and the butterflies are begining to search out sheltered places to hibernate. The ringing room is a favourite place for them and we will find them now all through the autumn and winter. If they emerge whilst we are ringing we gently encourage them to seek a cooler, darker part of the tower.

We have started a new season and have exciting plans for the coming weeks. We have a few quarter peal attempts coming up in September and October, a training day, and in November we are hosting a district ringing meeting. We have a fund raising coffee morning in November too and we are looking forward to an autumn mini outing. Check out our calendar for these. Reports will follow of course.

Our most recent community ringing was for the church fete which took place on Saturday 27th August. It was held in the garden of Rectory Farm, immediately adjacent to the church. We received several compliments on our ringing. On this occasion we rang call changes to a touch called Saucy 5, which was conducted by Sheila George.

The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers has posted a link to a very useful online document. It is called Belfry Upkeep and it comprehensively describes maintenance of bells, fixtures and fittings. I have added a link on the Safety Inspection and Maintenance page of this website. I shall check that I have everything covered in my own schedule of checks.

Although the year is far from over as autumn settles in I find myself reflecting on recent months, what we have achieved together, and I am continually looking for ways to engage with our wonderful community. I have been looking for inspiration for a new promotional video and have made some test videos to check feasibility of my ideas. It is very much work in progress at the moment so patience is the key word!

I have also started to write an account of the bells and ringers of Great Gransden from the late 1890s. I have quite a lot of material but am discovering that writing a factual, but most importantly an interesting history is quite challenging. Sheila G is helping in the geanealogy department and I am spending a lot of time thinking! This is going to take a while to complete so I might post interim updates as I go along!

As I research this and start writing, new ideas come to mind. They are sometimes a distraction because the doors which they open are just as exciting. Today, during my work on this project, I remembered that somewhere I have some videos of the bells and clock before the restoration in 2000. Fortunately I had the files transferred to a DVD in 1995, and lo and behold it was in my office drawer. I have transferred the files to the desktop PC, so at least there is a back up for these important, unique historic films. Now I have to decide what I can use from them to create a short video to upload to YouTube. More news on this later.

Our website doesn’t have many email subscribers. My regular blogs summarise what we are doing and I hope they make for interseting reading for non-ringers too. Please encourage others to #subscribe, there is no obligation and there will be no emails except one occasionally to say that something has been posted. Comments can be left if you wish.

Some of our ringers had expressed an interest in ringing at St.Neots, our 10-bell, 29cwt neighbour. Knowing that access to the bells and top of the tower was easy I made arrangement with tower captain Alban Forster for us to visit one Friday evening.

Through mutual agreement we decided on the 19th August and we were welcomed by Catherina Griffiths who escorted us whilst giving an interesting history of the clock and the bells. We were able to go into the belfry and then on top of the tower where panoramic views of the town and beyond could be enjoyed and photographed.

Afterwards, we went back down the turret stairs into the ringing room where we received a warm welcome from local ringers, including the vicar, the Rev Paul Hutchinson. There were also a couple of visitors, including one from Wymouth. I was invited to run the practice, which I was pleased to do, and we were able to make good use of the bells by ringing Rounds, call changes, Grandsire Triples, Plain Bob Doubles and a course of Cambridge Surprise Minor.

Most of our ringers had not rung there before and found that St.Neots bells are quite different from our small six at Gransden, but they rang very well, enjoying the new experience.

Our thanks to Catherine for meeting us, to Rev Paul for allowing us to tour the tower and the local ringers for their support during the evening.

We usually welcome two or three bands/teams every year when they request to ring our bells on their outings to churches in the area. The last group was on the 20th September 2019. Covid intervened and so it has been almost three years since we have had that pleasure, but on Tuesday 16th August we were very pleased to greet ringers from Swaffham Bulbeck on their “mini” outing.

Gransden was the first tower and the company included several ringing friends. We were particularly pleased to see Maggie who had wanted to ring our bells during the Jubilee weekend open ringing session, but she missed the opportunity by just a few minutes.

The ringing included call changes, Plain Bob Doubles and Stedman Doubles and they finished with an excellent ring down in peal.

Their next stop was Bourn which is an 8-bell tower, and we understand that they had a very good lunch at the Stove!

They were our 104th band of visiting ringers since our records bagan (25th August 1970), and we hope to receive many more in the years to come.

The photo shows some of the ringers, with resident tower captain Sheila ringing the treble (on the left).

The annual tower clean-up is not a very interesting event in our calendar but it is an important one.

We are fortunate that since the tower restortation in 2000 effective bird proofing is in place which prevents most of the dirt associated with towers from entering. However, we still get a lot of twigs, leaves and dust accumulating in parts of the old belfry. Some of this finds its way down the tower into the other rooms but generally speaking they are acceptably clean all year round.

I always start at the top of the tower in the old belfry which involves squeezing inside the old bell frame accompanied by Henry which works continuously as we move from bell-pit to bell-pit. This area takes about four hours and then we move down to the new belfry which is a slightly easier environment to access. This is two hour stint making sure that the bell frame is swept and the floor vaccumed. The challenge here is stepping over the clock wires and again it helps to be a contortionist.

Then, down to the clock room. This is quite an easy room to clean and takes about an hour but there are still pinch-points to negotiate and of course Henry needs to be moved around and lifted into certain less accessible places.

Finally, the spiral staircase, so Henry has to be carried to the top and working backwards we clean each stair tread, window reveal and the walls. This is another 30 minutes or so.

I usually clean during August and this year the tower has been a relatively cool place to work as we endure the prolonged heat wave. I work over the course of about a week and take photos of the completed work. At the end of it all Henry gets a wipe down with a damp cloth and his bag is replaced (again), and he’s then ready for his general duties during the year.

Cleaning the tower serves two purposes. Firstly, an annual thorough clean prevents any long-term accumulation of detritus which could damage the bell installation and clock (we are maintaining about £80,000 worth of equipment), and secondly it is a opportunity to inspect everything, especially the bells to make sure all the fittings are secure and safe to use.

We occasionally take visitors to see the belfry and clock room and it is important that they see it in good condition and well looked after.

My photographs this year include some graffiti. It can be found in one of the window reveals in the sprial staircase and reads EE 1687. Who’s are these initials? They are possibly those of Edward Elwood. He was one of the churchwardens at that time. It is known that the tower was restored in 1686 and there is a lead plaque on the top of the tower with his and his co-churchwardens’ initials, NL (Nicholas Livett) with the same date. We also know from the churchwardens accounts of that time that Edward was a carpenter and did occasioanal work to repair the clock and the bells. We will never know for certain if it is his graffiti, albeit a year after the tower repairs, it is amongst many names and dates in the tower. Every time I visit I feel that I am walking through history!

Well, that’s the hard work done for another year, the next major work is servicing the clock in December.

After record temperatures earlier in the week Gransden Ringers and Singers (bell ringers and church choiristers) were able to enjoy their annual safari supper on Friday evening relaxing in each others gardens. We have held this event for several years, there being a close link between the tower and the choir.

As dusk drew near the endless chatter continued although croquet had long been abandoned and Sheila George welcomed everyone, which included non-ringing/singing partners, thanking our hosts for opening their gardens. She also presented David and Sheila Prest with their jubilee badges, (designed by Rebecca Banner).

We finally left in almost darkness realising that even at the end of July torches are a useful accessory!

With thanks to Sheila for organising us, still in a climate of Covid challenges!

After our celebratory ringing from 2nd – 5th June I wrote to Her Majesty on behalf of the ringers congratulating her on the occasion of her platinum jubilee. I receieved a reply this week and was please to be able to take the letter to practice on Thursday to show the ringers.

This co-incided with the receipt from Rebecca of our jubilee badges which Sheila had ordered for all the local ringers who had taken part during the jubilee weekend.

We were also very pleased to see Alasdair and Julia making a fleeting visit to the village.