Saturday 7th May saw a celebration of ringing, food and drink at Maids Moreton Church, bringing together the local band, its new ringers and various trainers.
What were we celebrating? Well, in mid-January Maids Moreton had hosted a very successful Open Day which elicited a lot of interest in ringing. Advertising was key to getting people in through the door. Thankfully the investment the local ringers put into delivering 2,000 leaflets through letter boxes paid off as 50% of those who attended said they’d come because of the leaflet. We had people queuing up to get in and we had to extend the all-day event to allow everyone to see the bells in action and have a go. Downstairs the local ringers were circulating in a café style section of the church and a range of bell ringing exhibits and display boards were avidly read.
In all we had twelve recruits who were available to learn in February and a lucky 13th learner was picked up from nearby Shenley. Whilst obviously a fantastic response, it also resulted in much scratching of heads in the planning meeting in the pub – how on earth were we going to capitalise on this bounty? The traditional way of teaching wasn’t going to work so we decided to do something completely different; we’d take intensive teaching to the extreme and commit to getting everyone up to ringing rounds on three within a month. This being a leap year February gave us 29 days!
Armed with two rings of bells (Stowe and Maids Moreton) and the availabilities of the new recruits (who committed 10 hours of their time during the month) two days of phone calls drummed up 16 bell handling teachers who could cover the 130 hours of teaching required; most were ART trained, but we also used some very good teachers who hadn’t been on an ART course. As well as people from the local Branch we had teachers coming from Towcester Branch, the Bedfordshire Association and the Chiltern Branch of the ODG. A big thank you to all our teachers for traveling so far, so often, to help us out. Each ringer was taught using the Learning the Ropes scheme which allowed progress to be monitored and teachers to quickly understand what had been taught and what needed to be worked on during each session. Finally, there was an unlimited supply of cakes, biscuits and liquid refreshments available thanks to Georgie and Laurence.
During the last week of the month bells were untied. Seven of our learners could ring rounds on six unaided and during the following weeks further one-on-one sessions were arranged to help those who needed a bit longer to get the hang of it. Out of our thirteen recruits, one has decided that ringing is not for them whilst two others joined us on Saturday who are taking a break for unexpected personal reasons. We are looking forward to them rejoining the band when circumstances allow.
The bells are ringing every week at Stowe and Maids Moreton allowing the keenies to have two practices a week and others to attend at least one practice, depending on their work and family schedules. Practices are busy and lively. Missing a couple of weeks it was wonderful to see how much progress everyone is still making. All are now ringing rounds on six, with a number practising call changes. Witness the recent St George’s Day wave which raised money for the Branch Bell Fund and ART; two of our new recruits took part ringing call changes continuously for 30 minutes.
Looking to the future. Plans are fluid but there will be a gradual introduction to the bells of Buckingham (a rather intimidating ring of 8) in order to get a regular practice going there again. In addition, there are plans to re-start practices at Whittlebury and even for an outing in the Autumn. Finally we are running a Module 2C course in the Branch in June –with 5 of the Maids Moreton trainers taking part. To think, we brought the handbells along to the Open Day to fill the vast amounts of time we thought no-one would be there … how pleasantly wrong we were.