Weston Beggard, St John the Baptist
The Weston Beggard Parish Church of St John the Baptist is located beside Church House Farm on the south side of Weston Beggard Lane. This is a small hamlet and there are not many properties. I parked on the verge beside the church.
The church is set in an attractive churchyard a short distance from the River Frome. The ringing room is reached by climbing a 29 step stone spiral staircase whose entrance is inside the church. The room has one window and is a reasonable size allowing space for several to sit while the 5 bells are rung.
2011-04-29 [ expand ]
My first visit on Friday 29th April 2011 was for a practical session during the Hereford Ringing Course. Earlier in the day I had done some theory on how to call touches of Grandsire Doubles, now it was time to put it into practice.
The first practical issue was that the bells proved a little tricky to ring. All the ropes were long and had to have knots to shorten them but bells #4 and #5 were also so low that we were catching above the sally. There were half a dozen of us there to practice calling plus our tutor and a helper.
My only previous experience of calling a touch has been for Plain Bob Doubles which is very straightforward. Calling Grandsire Doubles has many more possibilities, there are 83 true touches of Grandsire Doubles! I decided to take it easy and only call touches as half hunt (or observation) bell. My first attempt was to call 60 changes on bell #3, specifically B P B P B P, this worked fine except that I called that's all
a little early. For my second go I decided to call 120 changes on bell #5, specifically P B P B P S P B P B P S which once again went well and once again I called that's all
a little early. I need to remember to do the dodge before that's all
.
The Bells
The tower has a ring of 5 bells with a tenor weighing ~8-2-0 in A. Dove's Guide includes details of the bells at St John the Baptist with more information provided by the Hereford Diocesan Guild of bellringers.