BINGLEY HANDBELL RINGERS 2012 NEWS
December 2011
With December here at last our carol ringing practising for Christmas is being put to the test as we kicked off with our first performance at a fund raising event, in Harden, for Manorlands Hospice. An appreciative audience joined in by singing and having a go on the bells. Here we are, below on the left, with two other pictures showing Georgia ringing and her Grandad Brian (middle) and (on the right) Ann (in the purple) showing Ann (in the black) how its done. Click on the images to see bigger pictures.
We now move on to ring at the Tower Bell Ringers Carol Service at Lightcliffe followed by an appearance at Cliffe Castle Keighley.
All Saints Church House Cookbook
In 1929 when the Ring O’Bells Public House closed down and was bought by the church to become Church House a cook book was produced by the Mothers’ Union as a fundraiser.
Eagle eyed Jane Callaghan, one of our tower bell ringers, was searching Ebay recently when she found a copy of this book being offered for sale. The handbell ringers successfully bid for the book with various fundraising ideas of their own in mind.
The book is a fascinating piece of local history. The shops advertising in it include Pauline Ward’s hat shop on Park Road, Hemmant’s Stores on The Strand (near where the Conservative Club is now) and John Pickles’ fruitiers.
The names and addresses of the members of the Mothers’ Union submitting recipes may ring bells (apologies for the pun!) with present day members of the Congregation and in particular the Mothers Union. The vicar’s wife at the time was a Mrs Garrad and the members included a Mrs Perfect whom we assume is a relation of J Perfect who is mentioned on the Bell Tower Peal Board for Queen Victoria’s funeral and who was one of the Church Bell Ringers in 1926 whose photograph hangs in the tower. Other contributors include a lady who ran the Eldwick Guide Troop and the headmistress of Myrtle Park School. The ringers are working out ways to use the cookbook to fundraise for restoration of further handbells.
Walk and ring 'count the steps' competition winner
Congratulations to Martin who has won our 'count the steps' competition. For our sponsored walk and ring (see below) those people who sponsored us were asked to guess how many steps we would have to climb up in the church towers where we were ringing the church bells. The total number was 153 and Martin, with a guess of 143, was the nearest. He wins a bottle of wine.
From the sponsored event we raised a wonderful total of £631 towards the handbell restoration appeal. A big thank you to all who sponsored us or made a donation.
October 2011 - Walk and ring report
Diane Greenwood - one of our handbell ringers experienced her first tower bell trip on October 1st. She survived to tell the tale as follows:
There were record breaking temperatures on the day the intrepid group of tower and handbell ringers tramped or cycled along the Rochdale Canal towpath from Walsden to Todmorden, up and downhill to Heptonstall, on to Mytholmroyd, and finally travelled by car to Halifax. We were sponsored to “walk and ring”, raising money to renovate another octave of handbells for Bingley.
Sponsor forms had been filled in, a competition organised to guess the total number of steps climbed in the five bell towers (only two in Todmorden, but more than fifty in others). “The Bucket” was purchased in Todmorden, which proved a fun way to collect even more money from generous passers-by on the towpath and in the pub.
The energy and enthusiasm of the bell ringers lasted all day long through the five different towns and towers with their different number of bells. At each place we received friendly greetings from keyholders and others.
More memories of the day include:
· free coffee and the church gardeners at Walsden
· the church cat sunning itself in Todmorden
· an excellent lunch in the canalside function room at Stubbing Wharf
· historic grounds surrounding the church at Heptonstall
· Mytholmroyd church hall ready for a party
· bells pealing out as the sun set and dusk fell over Halifax.
Thank you for your sponsorship, but look out for “The Bucket” in the future. It has an amazing knack of acquiring your money!
Wanted - print cartridges
Please pass your empty printer cartridges, ink or lazer, to the Bingley Handbell Ringers to recycle so that we can raise money to help us restore more handbells to augment those we already have. Any queries please contact Solna Burnham on 01535 273120 or 07884 233238.
London Underground Quiz
Congratulations to S Bradley of Keighley who has won our quiz. The winner was drawn from the 51 correct entries received; we also received 24 incorrect entries. The quiz raised over £400 towards the cost of restoring a further octave of bells. The entry from furthest afield was from Devon; there were also entries from Norfolk and right across the North of England. Here are the answers.
Sponsored walk and ring
Once again we are planning a sponsored "walk and tower bell ring" to raise money for a third octave of handbells to be restored; the date will be 1st October 2011.
The plan is to take the train up the Calder Valley to Walsden, then walk back to Todmorden. Then on to lunch at a pub on the canalside near Hebden Bridge called the Stubbing Wharf (or take picnic). Then walk up to Heptonstall, back to Mytholmroyd and finally train back to Halifax Minster. That makes 5 x towers and about 9.5 miles of walking mostly along the canal bank.
Everyone is welcome to join in, either walking some or all of the way, or going by car and acting as "back up crew" (ringing bells up and down etc); or, simply to join in for part of the day or even come along just for the pub lunch...!! It is not complusory to obtain sponsorship, but those who want to are encouraged to do so. Download your sponsor form now. For further details contact Jane Lynch.
August 2011
Since our appearance at Grassington the Handbell ringers have been out and about over the summer with various degrees of success. We have been to Saltaire Fete and Bingley Show where we formed part of the Churches Together Stand. Later this month we are performing at the Airedale Shopping Centre in Keighley.
We have learnt that it is a completely different matter performing outside in the breeze as opposed to a nice church hall. We have invested in table cloth clips and pegs to hold the music in the stands! There has been an interest from other groups and we already have a number of bookings for warm indoor venues later in the year.
As well as performing we have also been selling quiz sheets in aid of our project to augment the handbells from 2 octaves to three. This will cost over £2,000. We have raised over three hundred pounds this way, but the closing date is 31st August and we are now turning our hands to other fund raisers.
We are collecting more clothing and linen to sell for recycling. If you have any you can donate please bring it to the tower on a Tuesday evening from 7.30pm or Sunday morning from 9.45am. Alternatively please contact Ann Cossavella on 01274 409189 and arrange to drop them at her house on 8 Bailey Hills Road. Thank you.
At the end of September or beginning of October we are attempting a sponsored walk and ring in the Calder Valley. Effectively this is a sponsored walk with a difference – all the tower bell ringers amongst us will ring at each of the towers we pass. So more sponsor forms will be flying round!
We will keep you informed of developments in our fund raising efforts and in the meantime if you want us to perform for one of your groups please us know.
July 2011
Our first outdoor performance took place on the last Saturday in June (25th)at Saltaire Fete in the grounds of Saltaire United Reformed Church. The fete seemed to be a great success with lots ofpeople there and the weather was reasonably kind. Our concerns about music blowing away was allayed as the gentle breeze simply calmed our troubled nerves!
We rang our latest selection of tunes which includes - Ode to Joy and Grandfather's Clock (with lots of 'thumb plucking') and comments were quite favourable but, as suspected, we found it a lot more difficult to make the bells heard in the outdoors.
The Wombel (from the church tower bell ringers) was also there which attracted folk - anybody who had a go was approached to buy one of our quizes. Sales of the quiz are going well with £164 raised so far.
On now to our next performance at Bingley Show, on the 23rd July, with the Bingley Churches stand followed by an appearance in Keighley Town Centre on 19th August.
We have also been approached to ring at a wedding next year (which has caused Jane to get us some special wedding music) and for a fund raising event at Christmas, so busy, busy, busy!
May 2011
We took our courage in both hands and performed at the North East Region Handbell Ringers annual rally at Grassington on Saturday 21st May.
We were the newest and rawest of the teams there and so were very impressed by the expertise of some of the other teams performing. Some of them sounded amazingly musical and very clearly defined. They even did "louds" and "softs" and changes of pace....!
We were encouraged by the fact that we, conquered our nerves, got through our pieces without too many mishaps and were greeted with enthusiastic applause. We also managed to join in a massed ringing with all the other teams and keep up with them.
We really enjoyed seeing and hearing what delightful music can be achieved with practice and have returned with renewed enthusiasm to see what we might achieve with the Bingley bells. See us now on You Tubeat the rally.
February 2011
We must be doing something right as another couple joined us for their first visit. Roger, our treasurer, was greatly relieved as this meant he was not the only man in a room full of women!
In fact our popularity is causing us a rather nice problem because, if anything, we have too many members for the number of bells. We are now looking at the possibility of restoring more of the handbells so that we can make the most of our ringers.
January 2011
The picture below shows us at out debut performance on 11th December last year when we performed at the Carol Service for the Western Branch of Church Bell Ringers.
We hope that those of you who were at the All Saints Churchcarol service on 19th December enjoyed the performance by the handbell ringers. Despite two of our band being unable to attend, due to weather problems and other commitments, we still had sufficient members to play all our party pieces even though one of our number Diane had only joined us less than a month before. One of those missing was Jane our chair; our thanks go to Ann for her off the cuff introduction when she realized Jane was not going to be there to deliver her prepared speech. We hope this is the first of many such events.
Our appearance at Bingley had the added benefit of attracting the interest of a number of potential ringers who gave their names to Ann. Three of them joined us at our first post Christmas rehearsal.
December 2010
Things are hotting up as we approach our debut performance! We have a repertoire of Christmas carols and songs and are working hard to improve our renditions of them.
We have just had polo shirts manufactured with our emblem on and are now looking for table covers to match; that way we will look professional even if we do not sound it yet!
November 2010
You will recall the success of our great fundraising efforts to pay for the refurbishment of the handbells. However once they came back from the foundry and we started practising we had no spare money. We had nowhere to store our equipment so someone had to take it home each night and we ended up covering the tables with foam from a cot mattress and an old sheet.
We are pleased to report that we have now received a grant of over 800pounds from Cnet and this will allow us to buy a lockable cabinet, proper foam and table cloths, music stands anda set oft-shirts to wear for performances. We are really grateful to them and to everyone else who has helped us get started. We can only hope that our performances will be worth it!
October 2010
Our AGM was held after our practice on Wednesday 29 September and we had much to discuss as after a year in existence we have discovered our fledgling group needs Health and Safety and Child Protection policies as well as Public Liability Insurance; if anyone can assist with advice on any of these perhaps they could give me a call.
As well as the church carol service we have also been asked to perform at the Local Church Bell Ringers Christmas do in December.
If anyone else is interested in booking us in please let me know. Our repertoire at the moment however is restricted to Christmas carols as we felt this would be most appropriate at this time of year.
September 2010
The refurbished handbells complete with custom made cases arrived back from the foundry towards the end of June. It is amazing how they have been transformed into sparkling objects from the very dull and battered items which went down earlier in the year.
We are practising every ten days from now until Christmas; alternately on Wednesdays and Saturdays which gives most people the opportunity to join us in amongst their other commitments.