Author: So-Shan

Kingston wins the 8 bell Surrey Association striking competition

Report by Paul Flavell, Master Surrey Association

The Association Striking Competitions were held on the afternoon of Saturday 7 October 2023 for the first time since 2019, and we are delighted that four six bell teams and two eight bell teams took part at East Molesey. The judge was Neil Jones from Kent County Association who was quite complimentary about the ringing. The results were:

The Taylor Trophy Six Bell Competition

	Team	Faults	Peal speed
1	Caterham A	18	2hrs 43min
2	Kingston	30	2hrs 51min
3	Croydon	36	2hrs 47min
4	Caterham B	49	2hrs 46min

The A Patrick Cannon Trophy Eight Bell Competition 

	Team	Faults	Peal speed
1	Kingston	37	2hrs 56min
2	Caterham	42	2hrs 54min

Congratulations to Caterham A and Kingston for their successes and also many thanks to everybody for taking part. 

Many thanks to Neil Jones and also to Jane Marsters and the East Molesey ringers for kindly hosting the event and providing welcome cups of tea and biscuits.

Kingston Ringers tower tour of The Wirral (16-18 June 2023)

by Gavin Collins

Ringers from All Saints church in Kingston made the long cross country journey to The Wirral Peninsula for their annual bell ringing our in June 2023. The idea for the tour came from Dwenna Georges, a former resident of Burton-in-Wirral who learned to ring in the area.

Dwenna describes her association with ringing as follows: “My husband had the idea that we should take up bell ringing as a pastime, and at first I came along with him to our local church to learn. But the learning opportunities were limited there, so to broaden our ringing skills, we would visit other churches so we could improve, and so I got to experience bell ringing all over the Wirral”. It soon became apparent to the Kingston Ringers that it would be a good idea to tap into Dwenna’s local knowledge so as to plan this year’s tower tour, which she did with great success!

The plan allowed for a tour of nine towers, which started with stop on the way at St Mary’s church, Nantwich which provided Paul & Kate Flavell of the Surrey Association a chance to revisit a church they had rang at 40 years ago, and to meet up with a old friend and former ringer at Kingston, Martin Turner, who would join us on the tour.

The red sandstone church at Nantwich been described as “great architectural treasure” and is decorated with ornate stone carving both inside and out, and the eight bells set in a magnificent octagonal tower are definitely worth the journey for any ringer with an interest in architecture and ringing in beautiful surroundings.

At the end of our long journey we arrived just in time to join the evening practise at St Michael’s church, Shotwick were we met a friendly band from Bangor who were also touring the area. With only 6-bells to ring and 14 ringers in the tower, it was a good opportunity to have a good chin wag with our fellow ringers and exchange notes about the ringing in Surrey and north Wales.

The second day of our tour involved a visit to six towers:
Eastham, Port Sunlight, Woodchurch, Thurstaston, Heswall & last but not least, Burton-in-Wirral. St Mary’s church, Eastham is another red sandstone church, but it was the thousand year old Yew tree growing in the churchyard that captured the imagination of Judith Robinson, probably because they have both aged so well and look so young and vigorous!

Back to where it all began: Dwenna Georges at her tower of origin, St
Nicholas’ church, Burton-in-Wirral.

Judith and her husband David also have a connection with The Wirral: “Shortly after David and I got married, we lived in a tiny cottage on the banks of the Mersey while we were waiting to move into our first house which was still under construction. I remember the spectacular views and huge ships sailing down the estuary, but it was not my idea of a good place to live, as the smell of chemicals from the nearby refinery where David worked was very strong”.

The chemical industry has been a big employer along the Mersey since Victorian times, and next church on our list is Christchurch, Port Sunlight which was built as part of the model village created by Lever Brothers whose business later merged with Unie Margarine of the Netherlands to form Unilever.

Roshan Jathnna who a church warden at Kingston was very impressed by the bell tower at Port Sunlight: “The ringing chamber is spacious, with seating on every side, and their filing system is situated behind the benches looks is so neat and ordered”. Clearly Roshan has ambitions to introduce a similar system to Kingston!

Whilst we visited Port Sunlight, another notable ringer and Ruth Blackwell joined the tour. Like Dwenna, Ruth used to ring at St Nicholas church at Burton-in Wirral and there is a ringing board there commemorating a peal of Plain Bob minor she rang there in 2009.

On the last day, we visited Chester Cathedral where we were able to join the service ringing for Sunday morning service. The bells at Chester are located in their own dedicated bell tower situated at the corner of the Cathedral gardens, with a spacious and comfortable ringing chamber.

Before heading home, we crossed over the border into Wales to ring
at St Peter’s church, Ruthin. Overall is was a great tour, and sets a
high bar in terms of the variety and quality of the bell towers we visited.

You can see all of the photographs and stories from the tour on the Kingston Bell Ringers Instagram page and in the gallery below:

Surrey Association wins Essex Trophy 2023 🏆

By Paul Flavell

The striking competition for teams from the Home Counties was judged by John and Stephanie Warboys from the St Martins Guild, Birmingham and held at St Mary’s Walthamstow on the hottest day of the year! (Saturday 9 September 2023). After a welcome from the Rev Vanessa, Rector at Walthamstow and Andrew Kelso, Master of the Essex Association, Stephanie and John made remarks on the ringing in general and then commented on each team in the order that they rang.

We were lucky to be drawn first at 10.00am before the belfry became too hot! We had practised the test piece of Grandsire Caters on similar weight bells quite a few times and this paid off as we quickly got to grips with Walthamstow bells and rang the whole 14 minute test piece without any mistakes. Essential said the judges to keep a clean sheet as they had penalised other teams for method mistakes and trips. They said we set a really good standard for the competition. The little bells were particularly praised for controlled ringing which was maintained through the test piece. There was stiff competition from very good teams so we were absolutely delighted to win the Essex Trophy for the first time since 2006.

All our ringers travelled to Walthamstow by public transport so James White from Fleet has kindly agreed to bring the large Essex Trophy to Kingston tomorrow. We will share it out between our Surrey towers over the 12 months.

My thanks to all the ringers who took part in the squad and in the competition, well done all.  

Results

1st    Surrey Association            82%
2nd    Winchester and Portsmouth    80%
3rd    Kent County Association        74%
4th    Essex Association            72%
5th    Guildford D Guild            70%
6th    Middlesex                65%

Surrey Association Team
1    Caroline Prescott
2    Shirley McGill
3    Anne Rueff
4    Sheila Cheesman
5    Chris Ridley
6    Fraser Storie
7    Paul Flavell (cond)
8    Jeremy Cheesman
9    Noel Gibbin
10  Phillip Ridley

Our Bell Sunday service appears on page 4 of the June edition of The Bridge, the newspaper for the Diocese of Southwark. The quarter peal rung for the Coronation in Kingston is also featured on the front page!

You can also pick up a copy in the church.

17 for Coronation morning ringing so plenty of rounds on 12 (first time for Ring for the King learner Anne – well done!👏🏻); Grandsire Caters; PH9 for Gavin and then So-Shan (both got the very good thumbs up👍🏻); Kings on 12 for Anne and finished off with some lovely rounds on 12 🔔

We welcomed Danica De Giorgio and Nick Phillips from Sky News Australia to the tower on Wednesday night. They are over in London to cover the Coronation and wanted to find out about the Ring for the King initiative and meet some of our learners.

You can watch the clip here.

A Service for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 30/04/2023

Thank you to churchwarden and bellringer Roshan for suggesting that we include the bellringers in the service video. I’m glad my filming came out ok too!

From the Church of England website:

We’re praying for the King and for national unity as we approach the Coronation. Rev Joe Moffatt leads our service of Sung Eucharist from All Saints Church Kingston.

Join our online community from 9am on Sunday. This service has subtitles and BSL interpretation.

You can watch it here and the clip of the bells is on Instagram.

Here’s some photos from Bell Sunday – our celebration of our 50th anniversary of our bells from 10 to 12 and the dedication of our new carillon, electronic chiming device.

The camera crew who came to our tower have sold the video clips to media outlets around the world, including CNN! Here we are in this clip about how the UK is preparing to crown a new sovereign.