One of the most important but mysterious jobs in any tower is that of Steeple Keeper. You’ll recognise one when you see them – they’ll be sat in the corner of the pub after practice with a faraway look in their eyes, muttering to themselves about stays, garter holes, shrouds, dinglers, and twiddle pins and they’ll be covered in an interesting mix of cobwebs, stone dust and bird guano. They’ll be the ones who develop an instant nervous tic every time you bounce off a stay. These are the fell guardians of the belfry, somewhere that you probably visited just the once when you first started to ring to peer into the gloom, decide it looked like a chunk of the WW2 D-Day beach defences had been hoisted into the top of the tower before politely making your excuses and scurrying as fast as you could back to the relative safety of the ringing chamber where at least the most dangerous-looking thing is the Tower Captain.
The lot of the Steeple Keeper is principally one of lonely toil carried out in the dark and cold. However if you befriend one and offer to help, not only will you be inducted into the dark secrets of oddstruckness, clappers, castellated nuts, washers of numerous form and split pins, you will also earn the undying gratitude of all the other ringers as well. Almost all bell installations are even older than the ringers that use them, and just like the ringers they need regular maintenance and the frequent application of the correct types of fluids and unguents. And you’ll probably find your local association runs bell maintenance courses if you want to go the full Hogwarts.
It’s not just the belfry itself that needs regular attention, the ringing chamber will always need something doing whether it be painting the walls, fixing the carpet which has lifted over in the corner or repairing that wobbly box that you always end up having to use.
Beyond that, things inevitably wear out and need replacement and that needs funding, so if you you are a dab hand at badgering people for money, running a hook-a-duck stall or relieving post offices of their money (only joking!) you can help in that way as well. And I can guarantee that no matter how much money you raise, the Steeple Keeper will find ways of spending it all, and then some.
Don’t be afraid to visit the Dark Side of ringing 🙂
well said, and dont forget getting home fluff coated mending ropes.
It is becoming a real issue training new steeplekeepers. We grew up with our dads doing DIY and playing with Motorbikes/cars . The next generation haven`t had this basic training so do not understand basic skills such as freeing a seized nut or understanding how tight a bolt needs pulling.Even rope splicing is becoming a rarity. In a county that still has many pre 1st war rings maintenance is becoming a real issue.
Perhaps ART should look at running some courses in this area, or even just providing a central pool of resources in the way they do for learning to ring?