Tower reports April 2026
St Pierre du Bois and Forest Band of Bell Ringers April 2026
This year has been a very sad one for our band with the death of Peter Gallienne who was the Tower Captain and Steeple Keeper of the Forest Church. He was responsible for organising the hanging of the Forest bells in what was a very challenging space in the spire.
Phil Le Conte is now the Tower Captain of both churches.
Our weekly practices at the Forest on Wednesdays at 3.00pm and at St Pierre du Bois on Saturdays at 9.30am are usually well attended with 10+ at both and we often ring on 10 at St Pierre du Bois for the Sunday morning service.
The new ringers who joined us for the “Ring for the King” initiative are still with us and doing well but we would still like to recruit more ringers as our average age is quite high and we need to ensure the future of our band.
Town Church
At Town Church we have been very much enjoying more of the same! Really focusing on the basic skills and improving our striking. Over the past year I feel we have really come on in terms of overall quality and I’m very proud of our band.
We have a variety of different “levels” from plain hunting on 7 through to surprise major. Since the beginning of the year, we have been incorporating some spliced surprise major into our agenda, usually holding an additional weekly practice for these “advanced” things.
Whilst practicing for the 8 bell competition, Joseph helpfully pointed us in the direction of “BReNDA” which is an online equivalent of Hawkear. It’s been giving some great feedback (in plain text form unlike Hawkear) and we’d highly recommend using it if you are wanting to analyse your striking without access to Hawkear. Link here: https://brenda.oekrice.com/
In terms of the next year, we are continuing to do more of the same with little leaps for each person focusing on their next little win!
Vale Church
2025 has been another difficult for the Vale ringers. We only have 5 full members on our books and with one of them being the Head Server, only have a maximum of 4 available to ring for service on a Sunday morning, unless a visitor turns up to give us a hand.
Only 5 quarter peals were rung by Vale ringers during the year, and we had to either borrow people from other towers, or rely on visitors in order to do so. It would be easy to be despondent when we look back only a few years and were ringing several quarters a month with ringers having to take turns to take part! But we must be grateful that although few in number, our members are loyal and turn up to ring for the main service every Sunday morning to call people to worship, even if we can only manage call changes or Plain Bob singles. It is very rare for the bells to be completely silent when they should be rung. Many other towers in this situation would just not bother to ring at all.
The obvious solution is to recruit new ringers but this is difficult. As you are aware, learning to ring is a fairly slow process in the early stages and hard to make interesting. We have recently had a few people show interest but it is too early to say yet if they will carry on.
Access to the tower remains difficult while we await training for use of a harness when climbing the ladder. The bells and ropes are checked every few weeks by a non-ringer who reports back if anything requires attention.
We continue to have problems with the clock chiming mechanism. This has been a long term problem which we did our best to attend to ourselves, but this is less easy since we have had restricted access to the tower. When Smiths of Derby came over to do their annual service, they mended the offending wires again, but this only lasted a few weeks. As a result, it was decided to keep the chimes switched off and the clock is only striking the hour at present.
We thank those from other Towers who help us out at practices or to ring a quarter peal for an important occasion. We need all the help we can get – please!
Jersey
This year has been a great success for the development of our local ringers, supported throughout by several visitors. A particular highlight has been the progress of our youngest ringer, Maisie, who has successfully rung her first quarter peal of Surprise Minor and Surprise Major quarter peals – both of which were rung to a very high standard. In addition, we have celebrated numerous first quarter peals for other learners ranging from plain methods through to Surprise Major. With the support of visiting ringers, we were also able to ring two successful peals during the summer, the most notable being an 8-spliced peal at St John’s, which was a first for a local member of our band. Sadly, the year also brought difficult moments. We rang to mark the passing of our friend and fellow ringer Mike Halsey, with visitors travelling to the island to pay their respects to a valued and respected member of the band. We concluded the year on a high note with the striking competition, where a combined band from across the islands rang an excellent quarter peal of Bristol and Stedman spliced. This was an impeccable performance and clearly demonstrated the value and success of these branch gatherings, as well as what can be achieved when we ring together
Alderney
We continue to post all our news at cibells.com/posts, we seem to be the only tower doing so – join us anyone?
The Alderney band is delighted to report that the new flat 6th has been installed. It handles beautifully and is pitched perfectly with its new companions. The rope circle of our new middle 8 is great – all in all a huge success. Our first qtr on the new bell was rung n the day of installation:https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1928478
Sunday morning Jan 25th saw the second qtr peal rung by the Alderney band with our new flat 6thhttps://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1928597
We weren’t entirely sure what to expect of our new bell but it is absolutely lovely:-) To practice triples and major we had sometimes been (naughtily) ringing 1 – 8 so 2- 9 (with flat6) is not only musically far more pleasing obviously, but also just a tad heavier so has more ‘substance’ but the unexpected benefit is that the rope circle is tremendous:-):-) the 9 has always been a bit more forward/closer to the middle than the 8 & 0 so having it as the tenor of the middle 8 works VERY well indeed, and as flat 6th is also forward of the old 6 the circle is doubly improved. Our old middle 6, 3-8 has 3, 4, 5 & 6 in almost a straight line but 4-9 with flat 6th is VASTLY more circular. Now we have 2 eights and 3 sixes – affording us a huge variety on a practice night.
Whole band very upbeat about it, watching the hoisting and cleaning the tower afterwards – we even had an Indian to celebrate 🙂
