The Lincoln Diocesan Guild
of
Church Bell Ringers

Christmas handbells at Broughton

An old wooden cupboard, shrouded in cobwebs stood as a lonely sentinel standing guard in a forgotten corner of St Mary’s bell tower. The cupboard was about to be woken from its slumber by the Tower Captain, Jo Hoare. “So what exactly is in this cupboard?” she said. On closer inspection, an old suitcase at the bottom of the cupboard revealed 25 handbells, long since forgotten and unused. The bells were dusted off, appeared to be in need of some renovation and tender loving care, but otherwise seemed ringable, if a little out of tune.

The local tower band at Broughton now has a healthy mix of age and experience, as well as several new young ringers recruited last year during the Scouting Centenary celebrations. The band, and especially our young ringers, was keen to put the handbells to good use and to develop new ringing skills. The only other problem?  Nobody within the local tower band seemed to have remotely any experience of handbell ringing….or so we thought.

“I know a little bit about handbell ringing” volunteered Rod French, a Sunday Service ringer at Broughton, who had supported all the new ringers through bell handling tuition in recent months. Rod had talked himself into a new job and selected/ordered a number of bells into a ringable set for some tune-ringing experimentation. St Mary’s Rector, Revd John Cotton had also suggested that it would be nice to hear some handbell carols at the Christmas Carol service approaching, thus a mini-project was born!

The handbells were found to be in dire need of renovation, to the tune of up to £3500 in fact, but the local band decided that this long-term project was worth pursuing, and began to draw up plans for fund-raising activities.

Rod managed to find some handbell music and a couple of tune-ringing attempts by members of the local band produced some almost impressive results! Thankfully, further and timely support arrived in November in the form of a handbell ringing workshop at Messingham, organised by Joy Till and Roger Lord. Members of the Broughton band spent that evening ringing Christmas carols and bell plates, many for the very first time, and it proved to be a real inspiration and focus to practice their new skills in preparation for the St Mary’s Christmas Eve Carol Service.

A good number of Broughton ringers, including all of our youngest ringers, some parents, and some of our not so young ringers gave up four Wednesday evenings on the run-up to Christmas for handbell ringing practice. This was in addition to efforts to kick-start renovation fund-raising by running a sweet-stall at both the local Church and Scout Christmas Fayres. A very generous donation of sweets from Graves Newsagents in Broughton gave Rena Whitaker, Ken Allcock and Colin & Irene Betteridge a chance to reveal truly impressive sales and marketing skills at these events!

Finally, the day of the Christmas Carol concert arrived. In front of an impressive congregation (including over 60 children) our handbell ringers, consisting of Joe Steede, Kieran Dawson, Jordan Sykes, Matthew Raben-Smith, Colin Betteridge and Matt & Chris Hoare delivered impressive renditions of Away in a Manger, Good King Wenceslas and Silent Night, to great applause and many words of encouragement to continue their efforts.

Further technical advice and support from Joy, Ian and Richard Till has been gratefully received and fundraising efforts to renovate the Broughton Handbells will continue into 2008. We look forward to reporting on progress later this year – please wish us luck in this new venture for Broughton!

MH