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.