Dedication Service

 The service of dedication took place yesterday for the new bells. This was part of the service and AGM for the local bellringing Association.

I took the chance to take some video from outside the tower. The strong swirling wind made for some interesting audio effects!

Mary Weatherill, Licensed Lay Minister :-
Almighty God, we offer to you all the work that has been undertaken to restore the bells in this church and give thanks for the volunteers who have worked so hard to achieve this. We ask you to bless, sanctify and hallow all that has been done in this tower. Bless with your grace and skill all who ring here, and grant that the message of the bells may lift the hearts of all who hear them.
We dedicate these bells to the Glory of God, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen

David Bagley :-
Gracious Lord, we receive these restored bells on behalf of your living church and the wider community. May we use them to proclaim your glory to the world.
Amen

Odd jobs

 There are only a few little jobs still to do.

One of these was to partially board up the south window in the belfry to try to prevent the 3rd and 6th bells from being excessively loud in this direction.

This is the side of the tower facing the path up to the porch so it will be a more pleasing sound to those outside.

The windows on the north and east sides have now had a layer of carpet tiles added over the boarding to further reduce the overall volume in the direction of the only close neighbour.

Visiting ringers

 Here is a video posted on on YouTube of some high quality ringing on the bells at Strensham rung by a visiting band from Devon. Enjoy!

As for the bells, the swing times and clapper times have now been (nearly sorted)  with just the 5th and 7th needing some further minor tweaking.

Here is an unusual view taken by the bell hanger Matthew Higby.

There is still quite a bit of tidying up to do, but essentially the project is complete and regular ringing can resume.

Heritage Open Days

 As part of the national Heritage Open Days for 2021, I gave two talks in the church. These were on the church and bells, which of course outlined the augmentation project.

Here are the screen and projector all set up and ready to go!

This talk is the full length version of the one I did for the CCT's volunteer of the year presentation back in February. You can see that talk here.

 

Sound Control

 The only house next to the church is on the north-east side of the tower, and reducing the volume of the bells as much as possible on this side is important.

Both the north and east sides now have timber blocking the tower windows. To make it even more effective, a layer of carpet tiles is needed to reduce the sound level even more. The north side was completed recently, and the east side needs doing next.

 The west side will be kept fully open but the south side will be partially blocked as the 3rd bell swings into the window opening and rings louder than the other bells as a result and is very noticeable when listening from the outside. Blocking up the bottom half of the window will prevent this from happening.

New ringing room carpet!

 We have a fantastic new carpet!

It really looks lovely. Now we need some new mats to go with it.

 

Ready for the new carpet

A new carpet is being fitted in a couple of days, so tonight we got as much as possible out of the way. The old carpet was rolled up and taken away and the floor vacuumed in readiness.

The two benches left behind are too big and heavy to take down the ladder so the carpet fitter will just have to move them aside and work around them.

 

Ringing the 8 again!

 The Worcester Catherdal young ringers came for a visit, and this meant that all 8 bells were rung for the first time since February 2020.

 Here is a view from above.

Swing time correction

 One of the important jobs still outstanding was to bring the swing times into alignment. These are measured by the "Oddstruckness Meter" I make. Getting the timings correct will help improve the overall standard of the ringing and it is worth taking the time to get these fine details correct.

To do this, two pieces of metal weighing a total of 1.5kg were bolted to the vertical spokes of the wheel as shown here.

 

 

This slowed the bell down by 25ms and the swing time curve now looks like this :-

As you can see, the timings are now very close to the ideal curve (thin black line).

Tidying up

 We've managed to do a bit more tidying up. This is a rather large task, but it means that we are closer to the end of the project and will be well worth the effort.

 Not only did we remove 5 more sacks of rubbish today, but the lifting fame and beam were taken down and stored in a corner of the belfry.

This opens up the following view

From right to left are bells 1, 8, 4 and 5 with 2 in the foreground.

The large lifting beam over the frame will be kept in place.

Family bubble #2

 Another family bubble work session.

The platform in the ringing room window has been completed.

This is a seating area and the floor boarding protects the fragile masonary underneath from damage caused by being stood on. It also bungs up a large gap which is very drafty in the winter!

All that is needed to complete the job is to replace the bench seat some 8" higher than it once was.

The ringing room is now ready for a new carpet.

 

Family bubble

 One of the outstanding jobs has been to replace the trap door in the ringing  room.

One of the ringers has to stand on this while ringing, and it has been noticeably springy for a while. This was due to it being slightly rotten and full of woodworm holes. Strangely enough, the rest of the floor is absolutely fine.

Today, my daughter and I made a new one. It's not quite finished as it still has no hinges and needs cutting into two sections just like the old one.

 

Public Speaking

 During the lockdown, I've written an illustrated presentation on Strensham which I've now given to several groups using Zoom. I gave a condensed 10 minute version to the Churches Conservation Trust's annual award ceremony at the start of March. You can see this here.

 

The full talk lasts about 45 minutes and covers the history of the church and the local Russell family who were the Lords of the Manor of Strensham for over 500 years. This is a fascinating story which includes numerous MPs and the Russell family's involvement in the First English Civil War.

There is also a virtual guided tour of the church with the views off the top of the tower.

The story is brought up to date with the project outlined in this blog of the restoration and augmentation of the bells.

If you are part of a group, and are looking for a guest speaker, then please get in touch via the comments.

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!