Category Archives: News

Woolwich passes through the sound barrier

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For at least the last eight years the bells of St Mary Magdalene have been very loud in the ringing room, as workmen had removed some of the sound-proofing between the bells and ringers. However, today a group of eight ringers from Greenwich, Bermondsey and Isle of Dogs rectified the problem, by installing three sheets of chipboard over the holes and laying carpet on top of the ringing room ceiling.

We started at 10.30 and had a quick ring on the bells first, measuring the sound level in the ringing room at about 84 decibels. Two hours and a lot of carrying, lifting, drilling and hammering later we rang the bells again, to be pleasantly surprised that the volume had reduced to about 75 decibels. This might not sound a lot, but as decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale, that is almost half the volume.

Not only that, but this 12cwt ring of eight, restored by Taylor’s in the 1930’s are now quite pleasant to ring and although there is no regular Sunday and practice ringing, we look forward to ringing the bells more frequently and scoring a few quarters on them over the coming weeks – Reverse Canterbury, perhaps!

25 Years ago

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Twenty five years ago the tower of St James’ Bermondsey was in scaffolding. The heavy old ring of 10 bells dating from 1823 had been removed, as they had become derelict and a new ring of 6 bells had just been cast in the Whitechapel Bellfoundry. They were rung for the first time in February 1991. Two more were added to complete the current ring of 8 bells in November 1991.

Over the years we have taught many people to ring on these bells and we plan to hold a reunion of the ringers in November 2016 to mark the 25th anniversary. Over 40 people attended the 20th anniversary reunion 5 years ago.

The old ring of 10 bells were restored and two more were added to make a ring of 12 bells, which were installed in St James’s Cathedral, Toronto, Canada. Three of our ringers travelled to Canada to attend the dedication weekend, including ringing for a special service attended by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on 27th June 1997.

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The new bells
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The old bells leave
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The 20th Anniversary

Andrew reaches Level 5

By ringing inside to a quarter of Grandsire Doubles at Isle of Dogs, Andrew Booth has become the 28th person to achieve Level 5 of Learning the Ropes and qualifies for a prize under the ART Awards scheme.

The Association of Ringing Teachers is now moving out of its set up phase. Going forward the focus will be less on delivering ITTS courses and is shifting to supporting the 250+ and growing number of members who have gained Accreditation. Thanks to the generosity of various parties, the inaugural ART Awards will be presented at the Annual Conference at Loughborough Bell-foundry on Saturday 12th March 2016.

One of the Awards is for all those who have achieved Learning the Ropes Level 5, who will be invited to a centrally-organised weekend event: The Learning the Ropes Masterclass. This will be run in the second half of 2016 by a team of hand-picked, top flight ringers and will be designed to provide opportunities that are not normally available locally. Travel and accommodation will be arranged/paid for participants based in the mainland UK.

Andrew thanks all those who have helped him reach this milestone over the last couple of years and with twelve of our other ringers at various stages on the pathway, we hope that they too will qualify for similar awards over the next year or two. We look forward to celebrating their success.

http://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=984637

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The band after the quarter, Andy, Mike, Morag, Drew, Bridget, Roger.

Roger

Bermondsey ringers on Italian on-line TV channel

On-line TV channels are becoming quite popular, especially with younger people, as they provide short snappy easily digestible content rather than the longer content of traditional TV channels and media. Therefore it makes sense for us to follow up any opportunities for us to feature.

We were recently approached by Francesca Albini of Tele-in-liguria, who contacted us through the Association of Ringing Teachers website and wanted to film one of the Bermondsey practices. Francesca thanked us very much for a lovely evening and the video is already online, if you want to watch it visit:

http://tele-in-liguria-webtv.com/2015/12/09/chi-suona-la-campana-breve-viaggio-nel-mondo-della-campanologia-inglese-dalla-storia-alla-pratica-servizio-di-francesca-albini-inviata-speciale-da-londra-per-tele-in-liguria-web-tv/

Roger