West Lindsey Branch – Lincoln Guild – Young Ringers’ Day


New ringers – new friends – great potential for the future!

Who says that ringing is a dying art and young ringers can’t be recruited?

It‘s a pity that those who think this is the case were not at the West Lindsey Branch Young Ringers’ ‘Get together’ in January.

Daniel, Sam, Harry, James, Philip, Alex, Joe, Rae, Chris, Sam, Matthew, Emily, Jordan, Alix, Harry,
Alex, Katie, Marisa, Meghan, Matt, Kieran, Olivia, Caitlin, Libby, Rebecca, Ellie, Tiffany

Over the past year many young ringers in our area have been introduced to ringing through various events and activities, including using the Lincoln Guild Simulator with older Primary School children, introducing handbells and Belleplates into schools and churches and generally raising an awareness of ringing in the local community through contact with various groups.

We decided it would be a good idea to get some of the new ringers together during the Christmas Holidays to meet each other and make new friends. As a result twenty-seven young ringers from the West Lindsey Branch and three friends from the Northern Branch met together at Ashby Bowl for an hour of ten pin bowling. Some didn’t know any of the other ringers but they soon got chatting and having fun.

Next there was an hour of ringing at Bottesford Church. As there were so many the learners were divided into two groups. One group stayed down in church for half of the time and were able to experience ringing rounds and call changes on twelve handbells and Plain Hunt by moving places. The other group rang rounds and call changes up in the tower with the more experienced youngsters supporting the less experienced. Some had never rung away from their own tower and several were only introduced to ringing during the Summer so this was a really splendid achievement!

While we waited for the chip shop chips to arrive at Messingham everyone enjoyed some active team games including one which involved one unlucky person taking a jelly baby from a pile of flour using only their teeth!

After tea there were more games before everyone went to Messingham Church and invaded the local practice. Everyone moved around a variety of activities including Twister and other games, tune ringing on Belleplates, simple changes on handbells and just generally doing their own thing in small groups. Some even found time to do some more ringing!

This was definitely the noisiest and most active local practice ever but great fun!

Hopefully we achieved our aim of introducing our newest ringers to each other and enabling them to make new friends. Thank you to the adults, who provided all the food, including the huge tins of chocolates and biscuits, helped with transport, supported the ringing and were on hand to help when needed.

Joy Till

Messingham

North Lincs