Salford Priors, St. Matthew

St Matthew's, Parish Church is in the nearby village of Salford Priors and the first to which I visited "unaccompanied" by a ringer I had rung with in the past. I visited for the first time on Saturday 28^th October 2006 with a neighbour who I discovered rang there. I joined their practice which used the back 6 of a peal of 8 bells since the stay on bell #2 had recently had been broken and, on my first visit, had not been repaired.

The bells are rung from the ground floor and on my first visit rang bells #6, #7, #8. We did some call changes and plain hunt on 5.

The Bells

The tower has a ring of 8 bells with a tenor weighing 15-0-14 in F#. The bells were originally cast by Mears Stanbrook at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London. The tenor was cast in 1867.

Dove's Guide includes details of the bells at St. Matthew. Although Studley is in Warwickshire, more information is provided by the Worcestershire & Districts Change Ringing Association.