Flag of Denmark
Years ago, I went to York to experience change ringing under one of the Danish Church Ministry’s educational courses.
In Denmark, very little is known about change ringing, so we ended up attending two 5 days courses within a month. These courses culminated in me ringing a quarter peal with a group of ringers from York Minister including David Potter.
The Taylor’s Bell Foundry donated us a dumbbell, the first in Denmark. Since then bell handling has been introduced (by yours truly) to perhaps 30-40 people in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany. Mostly students, but also other interested parties. My day job is teaching and I am an organist in Denmark being one of the few people left who is employed by the state for the Church Ministry in Denmark. Finding myself in a stable and safe situation, I decided there was room for experimentation.
Playing the Carillon
It has been an uphill struggle to introduce a new tradition, like change ringing, into a country. However, there was much interest in learning bell handling. In Denmark, we cycle a great deal, ice-skate and windsurf (Cold Hawaii!); so an exciting new tradition involving BALANCE fitted in quite well.
I contacted Henriette Hoppe, who deals with our handbell education (she is also an organist and my assistant at the Royal Carillon at Løgumkloster) and she agreed to join me on the visit to the UK. Henriette lives far away from me in Løgumkloster/Møgeltønder, but we managed to have some goes at the dumbbell at Møgeltønder before departure.
A lady at the Taylor’s Bell Foundry put me in contact with Graham Nabb, who agreed to show us the skills for teaching bell handling. This area has certainly developed a lot with new digital tools and methods of teaching. Neither Henriette nor myself are youngsters but Graham managed to brush off and refine our bell handling skills at the study room at Kineton Tower fairly quickly.
St Peter’s Church, Kineton
8 bells 10-0-5 in F #
We subsequently made a visit to the Taylor Bell Foundry, where we were greeted by Andrew Wilby who showed us the archives concerning bell manufacture. We looked for the two Taylor bells which were delivered to a church at the Danish harbour city, Esbjerg in 1920.
Graham also kindly took us to a practice night at the beautiful Gillett & Johnston peal (a former chime from 1927, but at 1986 rehung as ringing bells) at Coventry Cathedral Garden. We also visited the Worcester Cathedral’s Taylor bells (1928). It was impressive to see the exceptionally well organised training centre with eight dumbbells.
Henriette had a go at rounds on “Abel”. It seemed to us that bell ringing is gaining in popularity, as we one evening found ourselves part of a twenty one person gathering inside the Pebworth Tower within the “Four Shires Guild”.
Prior to arriving in the UK, Graham, alongside IT specialists John Gwynne and Jon Tallis had been busy preparing tools for us to bring back home for the dumbbell at Møgeltønder. We thought it important to get acquainted with the new digital tools available for teaching; “Abel Ringing Simulator” and “Virtual Belfry” and to discuss some of the achievements made by using them. The digital change ringing world was introduced to us at Kineton by Graham, who also arranged a very instructive meeting at Roger Booth’s IT-tower lab in London. These experiences were very useful and hopefully we made ourselves useful as guinea pigs for trial of the digital technology!
Striking Analysis on Abel
We returned home much wiser than when we left, and we will now implement our new knowledge in teaching, when the weather improves. The bell tower at the 900 year old church in Møgeltønder is, in winter, a very cold place.
We are now SmART Ringers and we look forward to ringing peals around our country.
