Ringing Forums

NEW RINGERS FOR OLD!
Like most towers, we welcome new recruits of any age but there are drawbacks to taking on both younger and older woud-be ringers. Young teenagers tend to develop their skills more quickly, especially as they transition from rounds & cc to change ringing. On the down side, they tend to discover the opposite sex and/or leave the area for college or university. Older recruits are usually settled in the area and in their lifestyles but tend progress a little slower. Our most recent intake were people in their 50s - almost ideal!
As regards recruiting, we run two events most years. On a Sunday afternoon in the summer we often have a Tower Open Day. Visitors can visit the tower, climb up to see the bells (we have easy access), visit the clock room and even go onto the flat roof of the tower to take photos of the townscape. There is no attempt to recruit but those who wish may have a few pulls on a silenced bell. A short Powerpoint presentation loops round continuously, projected onto the white wall. For the avoidance of doubt (!) we have ringers stationed as stewards at every level in the tower to supervise and assist the visitors.

We follow this up in September with an Open Night for people who are interested in finding out more. This is always on our regular practrice night (we don't want recruits who 'can't come on Mondays') and is our 'serious' recruiting effort with trial pulls and demonstrations of rounds, call changes and method ringing.

Picking up Peter Scott's last point about incommunicative correspondents, I have come to the conclusion that the risk of scam, malicious or junk phone calls is seriously over-egged. During the 35 years I served as a magistrate my phone number continued to be listed in the phone book and during that time I received only one unpleasant phone call. For the last 50+ years my address and phone number has been visible on a small sign at the external tower door and - touch wood - I have yet to receive a single unwanted phone call or visit.

Until this week, the church website that I manage has included the name, mobile number and email address of all the 'public facing' church officials and leaders of the several church groups. Communication was easy. (And for the avoidance of doubt, each contact had previously agreed to their details being published). This week, an edict 'from on high' required me to remove all the contact details and require that all communications are made via the generic Contact Form which will all land in the Vicar's in-box. I hope that this not the kiss of death to the messages and that our incumbent can cope with them all.

Thanks for that Martin. The church struck a remarkable deal with Morrison's Supermarket chain. They sold the site of the the 1966 church and part of the deal included the provision of a brand new church, as illustrated in the booklet shown in Martin's post. The new building really is the 'bees knees' with community hall/parish centre alongside and a new vicarage too. The church organ is rated as one of the best in the region. Sadly no bells though.

Our new emergency evacuation routecost £9.95.

A good workable rule of thumb is to aim for the number of ringers to equate to 150% of the number of bells. Our 8 bell tower has 11 ringers at various stages from rounds & cc to Stedman5. Allowing for occasional absences this usually ensures that we have sufficient for Sunday mornings.

Yes, I can agree with Richard-N, although not an engineer, I would refer to the device as a 'cotter pin'. Perhaps the term is on the cusp of becoming archaic as common usage these days seems to prefer 'split pin'.

As regards the correct term for the 'TMP' (Tower Maintenance Person), I'm quite happy to be the steeplepkeeper of our steeple-less tower. I like the quasi-alliterative sound of the term.

Two illustrations intended for my earlier message about soundproofing shutters.

Peter Sotheran

How does one insert an illustration into a message here?

" I'm currently boarding up our lower louvres "

We had a local joinery workshop make us a set of large panels, each about 1 metre square - wide enough to span across the inside of the louvers. Each panel is about 75mm thick with a marine ply panel on either side and filled with 'rockwool' to absorb sound. The outer surface is lined with roofing felt.

We screwed 75x75mm undressed timber to the wall, at the top, bottom and at either side of the louver apertures and then screwed the panels to these battens.

The lowest of the panels covering each of the four appertures is hinged to open and allow the bells to be heard clearly on 'high days & holy days".
C:\Users\User\Pictures\Marske Belfry\Shutters 1 copy.jpg

We also installed baffle boards between the lower edge of one louver board and the top of the one below it. These stop birds from building nests in the sheltered nooks and crannies.
[img]http://C:\Users\User\Pictures\Marske Belfry\Louvers & Baffle Boards edit.jpg[/img]

They were fairly quick and easy to install and after almost 60 years and they show no signs of failing yet.

I ithink there is still a hole (!) but the ceiling boss is made of cast metal rather than lathe-turned wood. The metal would inhibit the flame from a burning rope from transferring to the wooden ceiling.

A couple of further thoughts on amplified bells come to mind. There is the apocryphal tale of the church that installed an amplified system back in the 1960s or 70s. The vicar rushed out and bought what he considered to be a suitable record - The Bells of St Mary's - only to be somewhat taken aback when the velvet tones of Bing Crosby boomed out from the church tower!

To my own knowledge a modern (1950s) church on a large housing estate in Middlesbrough had a tall narrow tower - it was little more then 2 metres square inside. They regularly played a recording of a 12 bell tower through their sound system.

Relatively small apertures will allow quite a lot of sound to pass though. Think of opening and closing the door of a room with a noisy activity - a small crack will let a lot of noise through.
One tower near me lifted the trap in the clock-room floor and wedged it about 1 inch open. This was a temporary measure but it seems to have worked well for the last 50 years or so! A more engineered solution would be to install 'sound flaps' in the floor between the ringers and the bells
A 12 inch square panel which can be opened permanently (and suitably protected from accidental trips and fals is one possibility. The other would be to open the flaps/traps when reqwuired, with a pull cord from the ringing room.
I don't recommend using 6" waste pipes as sound tubes as you often get a strange doppler effect as the bells pass over them. This is most distracting and can ruin the striking and the quality of the sound in the ringing room.

" a PC, attached to a powerful amplifier and speaker at the top of the minaret."

A church that I visit when visiting family each year has done just that. Perfectly struck ringing and a small repertoire of 'sound tracks'. Unfortunately the synthesised bells are those of the chime bars in a mantelpiece clock and produce a very gentle 'bong' sort of sound. Still, this is in Los Angeles not the UK so it may be a while before these systems pervade the British Isles!

Hebburn, Wat Phra Dhammakaya Meditation Centre, is not listed under the D&N Association's 'lost towers' and still has a tower correspondent. [url=http://]http://dandn.esy.es/new/central.html[/url]

Footnote to my message of last week:

Dove's Guide ( https://dove.cccbr.org.uk/dove?text=hebburn ) lists as:
"Hebburn, Tyne and Wear, Wat Phra Dhammakaya Meditation Centre. 6, 7–0–22 (366 kg) in A. Former church of Andrew (Presbyterian) (until 1982)."

Is this the only Buddist place of worship with a ring of English style bells?

A quick Google search for 'plastic pulleys' brings up several pages of suppliers - from your local Screwfix depot to many specialists pulley makers.

I agree with Jonathan! That is the way I was taught 67 years ago in a tower with a 23cwt tenor. There was never any talk of bouncing the tenor (or the 7th) to get it off its stay.
As Jonathan says, up on tip-toe, arms fully stretched holding the sally as high as possible, lower the heels to the floor and if necessary, 'drop' the knees a little. This will lift the bell off its stay up the balance point. 'Trebles Gone!' and a gentle squeeze will bring the bell in accurately after the fifth or seventh (or whatever).

Roger Booth makes a very valid point. Communication is the key to everything in the world of ringers.

It is essential that the inexorable move to online commuication is pushed out to meet the widets audience. It can't rely on people remembering to check in with a local website or FB page in the hope of finding something of interest. I served two periods as Branch Chairman in the 1970s and 1990s but now I'm completely out of touch with what's going on and, with a coue of exceptions who are the committee members.

Our Branch page on the YACR website is 5 years out of date - it fires out with the 2019 Newsletter! So that is of limited value. We have a couple of active PB/plain hunt towers whose news fills the branch FB page but we hear nothing from the majjority of the other 65 towers listed in the Branch.

From my occasional visits to other towers, I get the impression that many of them don't feel any affinity with the branch. Is it for these towers to find the branch contacts and seek them out, or is it for the branch to adopt a 'evangelical' approach and try to draw them in?

To answer Martin Rushton's comment of a few weeks ago, the former Anglican church in Hebburn, Co. Durham was acquired by the Presbyterian Methodists in the 1970s. According to my 1988 Dove it had been converted to become 'St Andrew's Parish Centre' at the time of that edition. Google reveals that it is now a Buddist meditiation centre:
https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/st-andrews-church-hall-hebburn/

We too adopted Adrian's approach and used an external microphone when making a film about bell ringing for BBC2 some years ago. We used a 'rifle' mic - it's quite long and highly directional (it helped that we had a good mate who was a reporter at the local BBC radio station!)

We stood in the backyard of a neighboroughing terraced house so that the wall around the yard screened us from any close-by extraneous noises and pointed the mic at the louvres on the side of the tower furthest from the tenors which we considered to be the loudest bells. The result was perfect.

Positioning a microphone above the bells will probably eliminate the sound of ropes rattling up and down but will probably pick up the clatter of the sliders being kicked from side to side.