Mid-Devon Tower Talk - Feb 22

Branch Practice St James Teignmouth

What a delight to see a good turnout for this practice with 16 ringers present including our Guild Secretary – John Martin who is not unknown in Teignmouth! No special method had been suggested but we managed to ring a touch of 70 Stedman Triples twice on the day before HM Queen Elizabeth II reached 70 years on the throne. Other methods included Plain Bob Triples and Double Norwich CB Major. The final touch was a half course of Cambridge Major which allowed Robert Law to re-acquaint himself with the method after 30 years – well done! Once again a very warm welcome from the Teignmouth ringers – and the treasurer recorded £1 profit!! Most importantly a very useful practice and we have had a lot of positive feedback.

Platinum Anniversary ringing

Although the official celebrations for the platinum Anniversary of HM the Queen do not take place until June it did not stop ringers pulling out the stops to mark the actual anniversary. So much so that Ringing World's Bellboard was almost overwhelmed! So far we have seen ringing at

Many congratulations to Seymour Street on his first QP and to Robert Law on his first for 40 years! We are sure there was other ringing in the branch but these are the ones we have spotted so far. There were almost 1000 performances posted on that day so it was quite hard to sort through them!

A Dream come true  (from Martin Mansley)

In 1966 I was a 15 year old Schoolboy just about managing to hunt the treble to Bob Minor. My home tower was Higher Walton just outside Preston in Lancashire where my father was tower captain. He was asked by Cyril Crossthwaite for the bells for a peal attempt in early January 1967. During the previous year a band had been attempting peals of Spliced Surprise Major. They were using a new plan to ring "all the work" (atw). Early peals of spliced surprise tended to be in short courses, often only 3 leads long. This meant that some of the bells only rang certain leads of the method.

At first this was fine, but ringers wanted to push the boundaries. Composers such as Albert Pitman had produced some atw peals which were pretty complicated to call but had only reached 11 different methods. A peal of 5152 Surprise Major consists of 23 courses so it was clear that in theory you could ring a course of each of 23 methods to a peal. Norman Smith from Burnley discovered a way of doing this by using a 7 part structure. Once he had done this, he was surprised that no one else had done it before and decided to ring the peals secretly, only publishing the "practice" peals once the final one had been rung. The band realised that ringing 23 different methods when all the ringers had to know all the methods really well was quite a tall order. They started to build up from 13 methods and by Christmas 1966 were in sight of completing the task having finally reached 19 but experiencing several losses on the way. They therefore booked 2 towers for two final attempts. It would appear that they were surprised to score at the first attempt at Bilsborrow on 31st December. They still decided to carry on with the next attempt and scored again at Higher Walton with the previous treble ringer ringing "inside".

At that stage I was totally in awe of anyone who could learn and ring 23 different methods. As it has turned out "Smith's 23" has become an iconic composition which has been rung over 800 times. For me it became a sort of Everest that I longed to be able to ring. My daughter Helen moved to Bristol for University and has stayed there ever since. Eventually she rang the 23 and repeatedly encouraged me to have a go. Having built myself a simulator and (much to my surprise!) being allowed to have it at home during lockdown, I started to feel it might really be a possibility. Mike Tompsett rang in Lancashire before moving to Devon and he rang the peal many times, some of which were marking the anniversary of the first peal.

Having decided to take the plunge I invited Mike to ring in the attempt and asked Helen and her partner, Matt, to organise a band. So, on Saturday 12th February my dream finally became a reality at Wolborough. After 3 hours and 6 minutes the final lead of Pudsey came to and end and we heard that wonderful phrase "That's All!". In Alan Reading we had an incredibly talented conductor and the rest of the band were rock steady so that any lapses on my part were very quickly sorted out.

I must admit that I really felt quite emotional at the end – the culmination of many hours learning blue lines and 55 years of dreaming! My grateful thanks to Alan and the band and to Helen and Matt for persuading me that it was possible. The beer in the pub afterwards has never tasted so good!!!
https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1492549 

Branch eight bell practice – Berry Pomeroy Monday 21 February

Wow! 18 ringers and a very busy evening. The bells were up and ready by 7.30 and they barely stopped until 9.00pm. A good variety of methods was rung, regularly punctuated by call changes. Stedman and Grandsire included several of the regular BP ringers and then we tried method of the evening – Cornwall Surprise. The first attempt was rather shaky and only last just over a couple of leads. Later we tried again and the ringing was much improved and more confident – sadly it did not quite get to the end but all agreed that it had been well worth having a go. Cambridge Major was also requested and we finally managed to ring 4 leads just in time to get the bells down again. A quite hectic evening but all agreed that it had been really useful. Many thanks to Mike and his ringers for such a warm welcome.

Future Events

Branch Training morning – Saturday 5th March Stokeinteignhead 9.30 - 12.30
The subject for this is Plain Hunt and Plain Bob either Doubles or Minor.
So if you are looking to progress with Plain hunt and plain bob this is the one for you. Please let me know if you want to come along. We try to limit spaces so that everyone gets a good chance to get plenty of "rope time". We will, of course, need enthusiastic experienced ringers to help with the course, Again, please let This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. know if you can help.
The St Andrew's Guild are kindly producing refreshments for us.
We look forward to seeing you there.