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Lewisham District |
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The Lewisham District now has its own website which provides loads of stuff about meetings, practices and so on. This is being maintained by Rupert Cheeseman and is accessible directly by clicking on the link above. Give it a go and let Rupert know what you think. The KCACR site will continue to publish odd snippets, but the really up-to-the-minute stuff will be accessible via the link above.
The July issue of the District Newsletter is now on the streets, so if you haven't seen one yet get in touch with editor Dominic Meredith asap. You're missing another great issue. In fact, if you really can't wait to see it, just click on the link above to go straight to the Newsletter online (includes issues back to January 2001).
Graham Long sends us this story for the Lewisham District:
Last year I arranged for the two redundant bells from St George's, Perry Hill, where I am Director of Music, to be transferred to the Keltek Trust. Fortunately, both bells found a home quite quickly — one as a clock bell to St Paul's, Canonbury, London, the other to augment the ring of five at Lynsted, Kent. This was very pleasing for us as we are in the north western extremity of the KCACR. Indeed, St. George's, Perry Hill hosted the Kent AGM at Easter 2008, in spite of there being no bells — although we did have the visiting Trafford mini ring (installed inside because of the snow!).
As chance would have it, the brother in law of Jim Odell, one of our ringers, Graham Cuthbert, is a ringer in that part of Kent and a member of the team that rings at various churches in the area, including Lynsted.
To mark the event we decided to have a mini outing to this part of Kent on Saturday 27 September, with the intention of ringing a quarter at Lynsted. When the date was mentioned, Freda let it slip that this would be just after her 80th birthday — so we decided to make it a dual celebration. This also meant that we cancelled our practice at Greenwich that week in order to have a celebration for Freda at Davy's Wine Bar. By the end of the week, Freda said she'd had rather a lot of dinners in the past few days!
So we set off for Kent, without Freda — who was listening to a quarter peal to celebrate her birthday at Farningham, rung by the Ladies Guild. We first rang at Teynham, a church in the middle of nowhere, where we had an excellent raise and lower, commended by the locals, and some well struck rounds, call changes, Doubles and PB Minor.
We then went onto Lynsted where we started with general ringing and then went on to ring a well struck quarter of PB Doubles. We all felt — and the locals agreed — that the new treble is a very good addition and fits well into the ring.
Unfortunately, the rather miserable landlord of the Black Lion was unable to accommodate us for lunch so we moved to the next village where a splendid lunch was had at the Chequers, Doddington [previously a ring of 6 in the local church but only 2 bells left since 1962]. Freda joined us here and we had a lovely time basking in the sun of late September. Please be advised that the portions in this pub are immense — the starters were like huge main courses — how those who had a starter and main course coped, I don't know!
We then journeyed on to our final tower, Harrietsham, where we rang a 240 of PB Doubles (2 x 40 = 80!) to celebrate Freda's 80th: Hazel Bing 1, Freda Cannon 2, Jim Odell 3, Bill Lanyon 4, Graham Long (c) 5, 768 cover Alan Munden, Jan Odell, Mike Medway.
The 240 band at Harrietsham
We had thought about doing some firing for the Cannon — but did not want to upset the neighbours, so we will leave this for a future practice night.
The quarter rung at Lynsted: 1260 PB Doubles Hazel Bing 1, Bill Lanyon 2, Graham Cuthbert 3, Jim Odell 4, Graham Long (c) 5, Alan Munden 6. Rung as 80th birthday compliment to Freda Cannon and to celebrate the augmented ring at Lynsted, 2007. The new treble — 1889 John Warner — was the one originally in St George's, Perry Hill.
We intend to have another mini outing somewhere next year — although we won't have any bells to give away or have any significant birthdays to celebrate — we'll just look forward to some good ringing and a good pub lunch!
Congratulations to the Lewisham District on their success in the County 6-bell striking competition at Aldington. For details and photos click here.
Practice night at Biggin Hill will be on Tuesdays as from 9 September 2008. Ringing times are 8 to 9.30pm.
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Stone by DartfordNegotiations were taking place to acquire the six bells from St David's church at Newtown, Powys, for installation at Stone, but that has fallen through and the bells are to stay in Wales. Fortunately for Stone the planned installation of bells at St Nicholas, Deptford, also fell through and the ex-Homerton bells are now to be hung at Stone — probably early in 2009. |
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The refurbished bells at Farningham were rehung in their freshly repainted frame during the week beginning 10 March 2008, and the initial ring was on Monday the 17th. The photos (l to r and down) show the third and second as they were; fourth, third, second (and treble on the far right) as they are now; the newly-painted clappers on a rather elegant clapper-rack, awaiting fitting; the complete ring (the fourth is just visible on the extreme left); the first raise in peal. The final shot is one taken by Neil Thomas, the bellhanger (thanks Neil), and provides a rather ghostly image of the tenor — not the sort of photo one can get with a wedding reception disposable camera! Details of the new weights and notes are as under:
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The first peal on the newly restored bells was rung on Sunday 20 April 2008 and details may be found here.
The 2007 ADM was held at Horton Kirby on 13 October and officers elected for 2007/2008 were as follows
A few years ago [writes Rupert Cheeseman] I seem to remember that a survey was carried out in the District for the amount each tower received in the way of wedding fees. I thought that it would be worth doing again. Thank you to all the towers that replied to my email. The results are shown in the table below. There is a large variation within the District ranging from £70 to £120. I wonder if organists, choristers and the clergy receive such differences in pay?
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tower |
total |
per |
number |
tower |
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Beckenham |
£120 |
£15 |
6 |
£30 |
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Bexley |
£95 |
£11 |
8 |
£7 |
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Bromley Common |
£96 |
£12 |
8 |
£0 |
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Crayford |
£80 |
£10 |
6 |
£20 |
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Eltham (before and after) |
£80 |
£9 |
8 |
£8 |
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Eltham (after only) |
£60 |
£7 |
8 |
£4 |
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Erith, Christ Church |
£80 |
£10 |
6 |
£20 |
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Foots Cray |
£90 |
£12 |
5 |
£30 |
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Hayes |
£77 |
£11 |
6 |
£11 |
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Horton Kirby |
£70 |
£10 |
6 |
£10 |
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St Mary Cray |
£115 |
£15 |
6 |
£25 |
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Sidcup |
£110 |
£15 |
6 |
£20 |
[There is no reference to the KCACR "spliced fund". Have the Lewisham folk thought about this? There are some details on the County page — Ed]
The following is an article which appeared in an earlier edition of the Lewisham District Newsletter, written by then editor Jeremy Byers, on how to recruit ringers. Everything he says is pure common sense, and should be obvious to anyone. Or am I being too naïve?
If it were that easy and I had the formula I would bottle and sell it!
This is one of the many areas that the current millennium committee [of the Lewisham District] is trying to help with but as usual there isn't an easy answer — if there was we wouldn't have a problem. This article is an attempt to give you some ideas that might help.
Looking at the world today one thing we notice is that everyone is very busy. As such when we are looking to recruit new ringers we have to appreciate that we are going into a market place where we are going to be competing with hundreds of activities all looking to utilise people's precious leisure time.
In order to stand a chance of attracting new ringers we have to make people aware that
General awareness
Making people aware that ringing exists and that new ringers are welcome is probably the first stage. There is a need to break down the general perception that "bells ring themselves" or that it is all mechanical. The average person's understanding and perception of ringing stops at the church door — it doesn't even get as far as the tower door.
So how do you get over this hurdle?
The Millennium and all the press and television articles have no doubt helped on a national scale. However you still need to follow this up at a local level. Articles in church magazines, the local press, tower open days and the like are all good ways forward. Remember, don't stop at one article and wait for the rush — keep putting articles in magazines — if people start seeing that you are an active group then they may become more interested.
Also what's your advertising like in the church? If you are anything like Beckenham, you might just find a faded KCACR notice advertising ringing times — if you can read it I bet it isn't up to date. With all the home PC technology there must be someone around who can knock up some bold notices to get welcome visitors into the tower. If you are hoping to recruit from the church congregation you have got to make them realise they are welcome — before they take their life in their hands and start climbing that spiral staircase.
It's so simple isn't it — not at all. I realise that this sort of effort is hard graft. Often with no apparent reward and you can easily start with good intentions and within two or three months have given up. Try it — if you get depressed about the response try talking to other towers in the District, see if they have come up with any cunning plans to recruit ringers.
Making it fun and enjoyable
Having got new recruits try to keep it fun and enjoyable. We all know that learning to ring is very difficult and at times soul destroying. You turn up to practice for weeks and weeks, get ten minutes on the end of a rope if you are lucky and seem to end up going backwards — result one ex-recruit who disappears very quickly.
The first and most important point is to get your new recruit's address and contact phone number. This means that you can phone them and keep up the contact — surprising what a difference feeling that you are wanted makes!
After that it is just a question of trying to use all the means available to encourage your new recruits. At Beckenham the use of One Per Learner has been the mainstay for several years yet it is only lately that we have used the Bell Club award packs. The use of individual progress charts have been useful at times when our learners have been looking fed up — it's surprising when you break handling down into stages how much they do progress.
In an attempt to help as much as possible I am going to try to put together some ideas and some sources for information and other information that towers might find useful. If you would like one (when I've written it) or have anything that you think could usefully included in it please let me know. You can email me on jeremy.byers@virgin.net.
[You could also have a look at the County Training Subcommittee's offering by clicking here.]
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