There was a lively wake up call for neighbours of St Peter’s on Tuesday morning (7th August) as the Lilliputters Guild of Ringers visited the Church on their Summer Bell Ringing Tour.
The Friends Group welcomed them with a breakfast of orange juice, hot drinks and croissants. 24 of the Lilliputters Guild came along. This is largely a group of young bell ringers with an average age of about 20 and the youngest coming in at just 12.
They’re on their summer tour of church bell ringing, this year taking place in and around Brighton. Outside the Church, hand bell ringers were also practising their skills.
The Guild members were delighted to tell us that our three bells and their oak frame – all made by the highly reputable Gillet and Johnston Company in 1906 (to replace those destroyed in the fire at St Peter’s in 1906) were in good condition. They did a ‘nominalising’ of the bells, where they record their sound, for the frequency and note which they were going to add to ‘Dove’s Guide for Church Bell Ringers’.
Our resident conservator from Hare and Humphrey, working on the restoration of the Chancel stencilling had to break off just to have a go at bell ringing – it was just too ap-pealing (ha!)
Note:
Gillet and Johnston: A clockmaker and bell foundry, based in Croydon, founded in 1844 – 1957.
Famous commissions include:
Wimborne Minster
Lincoln Liberty building, Philadelphia
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial carillon of 74 bells at Riverside Church, New York – this carillon contains the largest tuned bell in the World, weighing 20 tons.
The bells of Coventry Cathedral – destroyed in 1940
Recasting of ‘Bow Bells’ (church of St Mary-le-Bow) London 1933, bells destroyed in war 1941.