Ringing World 5256 (20 January 2012)

Front Cover: The Guildford Challenge by Neil Buswell
From time to time, some of the southern counties 12 bell teams take part in an informal striking contest during the New Year holiday period. In 2011, Oxford hosted an excellent day with six teams taking part, and they made full use of home advantage in winning the competition. For 2012, Guildford offered to host the competition, and the date was set for the New Year bank holiday: 2nd January.
If we can now step back 10 months, and travel 10,000 miles to where the College Youths and Cumberlands tours of Australia joined up for a weekend in Adelaide, one of the highlights was the Adelaide Challenge: a striking contest where the teams rang at all five Adelaide towers. This was a hugely successful and enjoyable day, although it must have taken a vast amount of planning and organising.

Thatcham bells ring out 1,000th peal
St Mary’s new record by William Butler
Handel called England “The Ringing Isle”, because every village had its own ring of bells. There are 5,686 rings of bells in England, so what is Thatcham’s new record?
On the evening of 16th December 2011, three women and seven men ascended the tower at St Mary’s, Thatcham and rang a peal of 5040 changes of Cambridge Surprise Royal in the time of two hours and fifty minutes. That has been done before, and in many places, what enters this peal into the record books is the fact that it was the thousandth peal to be rung on the bells, and that has only been achieved by four other towers since the first peal was rung in 1718.

Plymouth Youths – a weekend of fame, fortune and fantastic ringing
The Modern Society of Plymouth Youths was formed in February last year for ringers aged 30 and under in the Plymouth area. Since then the society has grown from strength to strength with founding members becoming closer friends despite ringing in different towers. We have had the pleasure of new members drawn from ringers trained up at Emmanuel church as well as students from Plymouth University. At the beginning of November we had a busy weekend with some major landmarks in the society’s history – further proof of the rapid and positive development of this society which is still in its early days.

Letters
Motivation - A. J. Barnfield
Leadership succession - Alan T. Reade
Olympic ringing – L. F. Palfrey
A reflection on Bells on Sunday - Philip Gray
Sting in the Tail? - Thomas Perrins

Three Minutes at Eight o’clock
Martin Creed’s idea 1197, for the Olympic opening day
By David W. Struckett, Ringing Master, Kidderminster, Worcestershire
There are of course, several initiatives related to the forthcoming London Olympics involving bells – recent musical and historical productions recently seen on TV, and the publicity about new ‘method’ like compositions for change ringing to mention a few. The venture apparently thought up by Martin Creed, of sounding bells ‘… as fast and as loud as possible for three minutes …’ had initially brought out mixed feelings among the adepts of the Exercise, and ringers around the country may not yet feel confident about supporting the idea of making such a noise early on the opening day.

Central Council of Church Bell Ringers
Notes of a meeting between CCCBR, EH and CBC representatives
A meeting took place on Monday, 10th October 2011 at Church House, Westminster, between representatives of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers and officers of the Church Buildings Council and English Heritage.

Methcom sketch
The Methods Committee met on 9th October in, for reasons which may remain obscure, the august surroundings of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
Once again, I was awarded the task of writing this ‘Sketch’ under item 0 of the agenda. We went through the usual initial items quite quickly – apologies, minutes, matters arising and set to work on quite a lengthy list of things to discuss.

Obituaries
Frances M. Hibbert, Richard (Dickie) Dean

Happy birthday Channel Islands District!
In September the Channel Island District of the Winchester and Portsmouth Guild celebrated the 30th anniversary of its formation of a separate District within the Guild.  Prior to this, all Channel Island towers, (of which there were only five at the time) were part of the Christchurch and Southampton District. It is difficult enough now to attend District meetings, but when this necessitated a trip to England, it was virtually impossible.
Incoming ringers, and a general strengthening of the C.I. bands in the late 70s, led to the idea that we would be better served by our own District. To this end, ringers from all the “ringable” towers were invited to attend an inaugural meeting at St Mark’s, Jersey, to discuss the proposal. Reading through the minutes, (meticulously kept and hand-written by Jack Worrall), one can glean interesting information about the early years of the District.

Tail Ends
RUNNING IN. PLEASE PASS. Older readers might remember this with dread. It usually signified a blockage on an A-road, a slow car at the head of a long queue of frustrated drivers, for in the days of which I speak many A-roads were not dual-carriageways yet carried heavy traffic and the invitation to pass-overtake was almost mockery.
Running-in was a mandatory requirement for a new car or for one in which the motor had just been overhauled. Running-in entailed not over-revving the engine or travelling at excessive speed. Recently I saw a handbook for a popular English car of the late 1940s. It carried a warning that, during the first 1,000 miles, the road-speed must not, under any circumstances, exceed 30 miles-per-hour in top (that is, fourth) gear. Ah, what gentle times in which we lived then!

The Ringing World presents
BellBoard
In 2011, The Ringing World enjoyed a year of celebration and reflection on 100 years of life at the heart of change ringing. As we enter 2012, we are looking ahead and are excited to launch the first stage of our initiative to serve the needs of the ringing community in 2012 and beyond.
The Ringing World is delighted to announce BellBoard, the first step in the development of The Ringing World’s new online resource.

Towers that have clocked-up 1,000 peals
The first was, predictably, Loughborough Bell Foundry campanile, which scored the 1,000th peal on the bells on 15th February 1963 with a peal conducted by James Poynor of 2 Minor Methods rung on the front six. I imagine that no one was aware of the significance at the time.