St.Martin's Bellringers
BBC Radio 4 “Bells on Sunday”
As some of you may already know, the bells of St. Martin's were recorded to mark the 800th Anniversary of our church in Desford and sent to the BBC for one of their “Bells On Sunday” programmes on Radio 4.
Dr. Geoff Evans, of Station Road, managed to secure the services of a De Montfort University postgraduate student, Michael Gatt, who is studying for an MA in Music, Technology and Innovation. Mike has already recorded Leicester Cathedral bells and so, on Monday 2nd November, he recorded St. Martin's bells during the ringers' practice night.
The band, from left to right, were Greg Jones (Ringing Master), Averil Brooker, Kate Groocock, Sue Ward, Darren Tilley and Tony Farmer. The ringers were ringing “St. Martin's”, a method learnt especially for the 800th Anniversary.
Mike made four recordings of the bells ringing during the evening and, the very next day, produced five CDs – all of which were copied and sent off to the BBC for them to use to make their Radio 4 programme. The broadcast was on SUNDAY 10TH JANUARY 2010 at 5.43am, and then repeated on MONDAY 10TH JANUARY at 12.45am.
The bellringers of Desford feel quite honoured that their ringing has been accepted for broadcast as the programme will be heard by ringers, not only here in England, but also all over the Anglican world.
You can see more pictures of the bells in our virtual tour by following this link.
Bellringers mark 800th Anniversary with Quarter Peal
After ringing a quarter peal of “St. Simon's” on 29th June to celebrate the Flower Festival, the bellringers at St. Martin's learnt another new method, “St. Martin's”, and successfully rang a quarter peal to mark the 800 th Anniversary of the Church in Desford on Sunday, 6 th December.
As the name suggests, a quarter peal is “a quarter of a peal” but are you any the wiser? A peal is continuous ringing in order to ring 5000 changes or more. So, as your mathematical skills will testify, a quarter peal is the continuous ringing of 1250 changes or more. But “what is a change ?” you may well ask. On the six bells at Desford, when all the bells ring once (eg. 1,2,3,4,5,6), that is ONE change. Ringing more than 1250 changes takes about 40 to 45 minutes of continuous ringing. So, how long would a whole peal take, do you think?
The art of change-ringing, which is undertaken by most bands of ringers in churches throughout England , can be made more interesting and challenging by varying the order of bells in the “change”, according to different bellringing rules. Consequently, these rules give rise to “methods”, which have particular names. If you have read Dorothy L. Sayers book “The Nine Taylors” (a detective novel featuring her internationally famous detective Lord Peter Wimsey), then you will have come across names like “Kent Treble Bob Major”, “Grandsire Triples”, “Stedman Triples” and “Plain Hunting”.
On Sunday, 6 th December 2009, the Desford Bellringers rang a quarter peal of 1260 changes of “ St. Martin 's Doubles” in a time of 43 minutes. This was rung to commemorate, not only the 800 th Anniversary of St. Martin's Church, but also the Annual Christmas Tree Festival and my Mother's 90 th Birthday. The band of ringers were Averil Brooker (Treble Bell), Greg Jones (2 nd Bell ), Darren Tilley (3 rd Bell ), Kate Groocock (4 th Bell ) and Tony Farmer (5 th Bell and the conductor of the quarter peal). It was the first quarter peal in the
method of St. Martin 's for all members of the band.
If you would like to learn more about bellringing at St. Martin's and have a go at ringing one of the bells, then don't hesitate to contact me on 824696. Visitors and people wanting to learn to ring are always welcome.
Greg Jones, Ringing Master.