Adderbury Church Bellringers

How can there be a website for our village without something about our church bells and the bellringers?

The original peel of six bells in the spire of St Mary's Church, Adderbury was re-cast in 1789 as a peel of 8 bells and it is this peel that we have today. Over the years there has been a fair amount of maintenance done on the spire, the frame and the bells, two of which developed cracks and had to be re-cast.

The clock and chimes were installed in the spire in 1887 and the carillon was added in 1888, these are wound every day by Allan Fox. You will have noticed that the carillon plays a series of tunes on the hour, every three hours from 6am to 9pm every day. The bell chimes and the carillon are switched off whenever the bells are being rung.

Today we have a very active group of bellringers who meet every Thursday evening at 7.30 and practice until 9pm. They also ring on Sundays for the 10.30 morning service and on Christmas Eve, Christmas day, Easter Sunday, Remembrance Sunday and other auspicious times, including weddings when requested.

The bellringers ring from the ringing chamber which is in the spire, 63 steps of the spiral stairway above the church but below the bellchamber. Confirming general belief, there are bats in the belfry but fortunately the few that do come and go tend to live in the upper part of the spire, so we don't often have problems with them in the ringing chamber.

Learning church bell ringing is not easy, the main problem is that the older you are the more difficult it is to learn! The present group of ringers cover a wide expanse of experience and ability but the common denominator is commitment and enjoyment. The 'tunes' that are rung on bells are called methods and there are many of them, with delightful names: Grandsire, Norwich Court, Cambridge Surprise and Bob Doubles are just four examples. This method ringing is more prevalent in the Church of England than any other Christian Church and is rarely heard elsewhere. The earliest records on method ringing are found in the early 17th Century in The Lincoln Cathedral Guild and The Ancient Society of Ringers in St. Stephens Bristol. There are approximately 5,750 ringable rings of bells in England and an estimate of about 370 in the rest of the world, including the other countries of U.K.

And so - if this has interested you at all and you think that you may like to learn to ring, come and watch and listen one Thursday evening. Phone first to check that we will be practicing.

Contacts: Trevor Trivett (811 773), Christopher Holmes (810 308) and Donald Higham (811 712).

March 2008