Castlemorton, St Gregory

Castlemorton Parish Church of St Gregory can be found, like many other churches, on Church Road. It lies about half a mile East of the B4208 that runs from Malvern heading South towards Gloucester. Castlemorton is a small village and I found it easy to park on Church Road near the Church.

I visited for the first time on Friday 11^th July 2008. It took me longer to get there than I had expected and did not arrive until almost 8:00pm. The ringing room is reached by climbing a short steep stair/ladder. It is a nice spacious room with a large arched window facing West and large glazed arch on the opposite wall facing the nave. The ceiling is of heavy oak timbers and is quite a long way up meaning a long pull to ring the bells that were nonetheless quite loud. It had been a miserable excuse for a summers day with an overcast sky and lots of rain but the sun managed to make an appearance at sunset and flooded the ringing room with light. This must happen regularly since they have a blind that can be pulled down over the arched window so that the ringers can manage to see.

There were 10 ringers and they were all much more proficient than I am. While I was there they managed to do Cambridge, St Simons, London, Kent and Plain Bob Minor. I joined them for a couple of courses of Plain Bob Doubles, once with me as Observation and the second time affected. I managed to finish on both occasions though not very elegantly. The bells are quite light and I was ringing a little too quickly which makes the dodges particularly tricky. A nice evening.

The Bells

The tower has a ring of 6 bells with a tenor weighing 6-3-18 in A. Dove's Guide includes details of the bells at St Gregory.

The Worcestershire & Districts Change Ringing Association have additional information on the Parish Church of St Gregory.