As a group of former students of Birmingham School of Bell Ringing, we began to realise that even though we had rung a good number of quarter peals between us, we were still struggling.
In many of the quarter peals we had each rung, our mistakes were corrected by the experts around us. So when one of our group, Andy Hardy, came up with the original idea to ring a quarter to celebrate five years of the Birmingham School of Bell Ringing, we asked, “Could we ring a quarter peal ourselves?”
To do so, we knew we would need to help each other correct any mistakes and someone would need to be able to conduct. Just 45 minutes of perfect ringing; 33 bobs, and a “that’s all!”
At about this time, St Peter’s Church in Harborne (the home tower of three of the group) was fitted with sound control, so we got busy and organised our first practice in March 2019.
St Martin’s Guild Birmingham was already running an X practice, so we decided to prove we could remember the alphabet and called ourselves the Y practice, which rapidly became the ‘WHY’ practice. So off we went. At first, we couldn’t even manage a plain course. We had been used to keeping quiet and our tutors setting us straight, but now we had to practise helping each other out, calling out “dodge with me” or “you’re making seconds”. We met roughly fortnightly and gradually got better and better; the ringing evened out, fewer mistakes were made and the conductors gained confidence. We also did general ringing exercises and methods including Minor, so we could practise “turning in the tenor”. By September, we felt we could have a go. Things went fairly well until the final 60 when it collapsed and we had to admit defeat. We looked at each other and determined not to be thwarted, and quickly organised another attempt for the following week, this time at the home tower of other band members, StMichael’s in Brierley Hill.
The jubilant band looking forward to celebratory cake!
I can’t remember all the details, except that as the conductor, my throat got drier and drier as we neared the end. When we were down to the final 60, I knew all I had to do was call the five to make the bob three times and call “that’s all”. We had done it! Home and dry and looking forward to celebrating with tea and home-made cakes. But that’s not all …. We are now very keen to carry on with the Why practices. Andy Hardy couldn’tring in the first quarter, even though hecame up with original idea! So here is our next goal, I think we definitely need to plan another one.
This article first appeared in the January 2020 edition of Tower Talk magazine, the free quarterly e-magazine for new ringers. Make sure you don’t miss out on future editions by signing up here.