Money for old rope

With no chance of ringing at Strensham on the horizon, I've been putting together some material for a presentation on Strensham's church and bells. The idea is that this could be presented via Zoom or eventually in real life to an audience once the restrictions are lifted.

In compiling the material, it turns out that there is far more information available than would fit into a 45 minute presentation.

One of the things I left out it this little story from 1998, shortly after I took on looking after the tower and bells for the Churches Conservation Trust.

I was contacted through the Churches Conservation Trust’s local representative Andrew Pike by a TV production designer called Michael Pickwoad. Michael was after some old bell ropes for use as props in an episode of Kavanagh QC. This was filmed at All Saints' Church, Shirburn, Oxfordshire.

At Strensham, I’d just removed the old and very tatty ropes and put some better ones on. These old ropes were hired to the production company and we received a donation of £20 for their use.

This clearly is where the phrase “money for old rope” comes from!

The episode is on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxzX4JG0e84

Go to 32 minutes and 6 seconds and you will see actor JohnThaw touching the ropes.

Michael also borrowed the ropes for a version of Cider with Rosie which was being filmed at Avening church near Laurie Lee’s home in Slad. This time however, the footage ended up on the cutting room floor…

Peals at Strensham

While there's nothing happening up the tower, I've been delving into the history of the bells and have found the first full peal ever rung at Strensham.

This was the second attempt, the previous one being lost a couple of weeks beforehand. Of these ringers, Robert Knowles was from Malvern Link, and William Ranford was from Suckley.

There have been 26 peals on the bells so far, including two which have been slightly controversial! One peal rung in 1923 wasn't published in the bell ringers newspaper, The Ringing World, which it should have been (and as a result took some finding!), and another rung in 1977 had a composition which broke the rules (at the time) and was rejected by the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers!

Everything on hold

No doubt you will have realised that as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, all work on Strensham bells has ceased. Also, there will be no more ringing until further notice.

We are very much looking forward to the day when we can celebrate the end of the restrictions by ringing Strensham's bells.

Until that time, then I probably won't be updating this blog very often, as there is not going to be much to report.

Stay safe....

Award nominations

The Strensham bells project was nominated for a major national award!

The Heritage Hero awards are organised by the Heritage Alliance and the winners are announced at their annual Heritage Day event held at the Tower of London.

The 2019 Heritage Day was originally due to take place in November, but was was postponed to February 26th because of the General Election.

Although we didn't win, we were one of the seven shortlisted projects. Considering just how many heritage based projects there must be going on at the moment, this is quite an achievement.

This is a screenshot from slides presented at the awards ceremony.

We were also nominated for a Churches Conservation Trust Volunteer of the Year award, but we didn't win that either!

Sound Control

Now that we are ringing the new 8, it's time to try to lower the volume of the bells outside the tower, especially towards the North and East sides where we have the neighbours to consider.

 

This will involve boarding up the tower windows, a job which was started tonight. This is the East window, almost fully boarded. The idea is to put a layer of carpet tiles on the boards to further reduce the sound levels.

The South side will be partially blocked up just to prevent the 3rd bell from 'shouting' too loud in the churchyard.

Rope guide modifications

The rope guide has been modified so that the 7th rope now falls better in the rope circle. Previously it was somewhat closer to the window and the ringer of the 7th had to have their heels on a rather uneven part of the window sill at floor level.

This also makes room for a seating area in the window.

The 6th (left) and 7th (right) now have ceiling bosses as well.

You can see on the right of this photo, against the wall, one of the square rope chutes from the original medieval installation. There's another square hole (minus the chute) to the left of the 6th rope. The larger square hole that's covered up on the far left is another interesting feature as it was for the weights of a church clock which is long gone.

The positions of these holes, and three more in other places, give a clue to the number of bells (5) and the layout of the frame as originally installed.

We do know that in 1552 there were just 3 bells which came from Bordesley Abbey which had been dissolved in 1538. About 10 years prior to the 1552 date, the bells which had been in the tower were sold to pay for new pews in the church.

These c1540 pews still exist, but the Bordesley Abbey bells don't, since in 1704/5 five new bells were cast in Gloucester by Abraham Rudhall I, and the frame rotated 45 degrees.

Here's a reminder of the current frame layout.

Diagonal frames are fairly unusual, other local examples are at Powick (also 1705) and Croome D'Abitot on the NT Croome Estate just up the road. There's also another nice example at Brailsford in Derbyshire, also by Rudhall in 1717.

Swing time targets

After playing with the swing time figures, I've now calculated the target times for each bell and what is needed to achieve this.

Slow down the treble by 25ms, the 6th by 10ms and the 7th by 7ms. This will be done by fixing 

 counter weights at the top of the wheel.

Speed up the 4th by 14ms and the 5th by 6ms. This will be done by fixing ballast weights at the bottom of the wheel.

There are no changes to the 2nd, 3rd or tenor.

Compare this graph with the one in the previous post.

The amount of correction for each bell seems very small but there is a good reason for setting them up as accurate as this. Experiments I have done in the past indicate that the human ear can detect errors in rhythm down to about 20ms, ie +/-10ms.

Setting up the swing times is the only the first part of getting the bells set up. The second part is to get the average clapper swing times set up, and the third and final part is to cancel out any oddstruckness.

So in order to achieve this +/-10ms target, it's important to get the swing timings as good as possible so that the accumulated errors across all three stages are within limits.

The results will be well worth the effort!

Measuring the bell swing times

The first job tonight was to measure the swing times of each bell. To do this I used one of the Oddstruckness Meters I make.

This shines a light at a reflective tape on the wheel, and when the bell is swung gently from side to side, the meter measures the swing each way, and then adds them together to display the period of swing.

 The figures for each bell are then entered into a spreadsheet which produces the above graph. The blue line is the raw data, and the black line is a 2nd order polynomial which helps analyise the results.

From this, it is possible to see that the bells 1, 3 and 6 need slowing down, and this will be done with counterbalance weights which will be bolted to the spokes at the top of the wheel.

It is possible, but much harder to speed 2 and 4 up as there are no spokes in a suitable place for mounting any weights.

This will be an iterative process to get the line as smooth as possible.

The other job was to install a temporary rope spider to hold the ropes up out of the way. This will be replaced at some point with a bespoke one made by my Nephew who is studying to be a blacksmith.

Visiting ringers

Word is starting to spread about Strensham's bells!

Here is a visiting band, mainly from the Worcester area, but there were also people in the group from Reddich, Guildford and Basingstoke.

A fantastic sound, which will only get better when everything in the belfry has been accurately set up.

So far, there have been 3 ringing sessions on the new eight, and the total head count is 58!