Andy Pollock rings before BBC Radio Cumbria Carol Service at St Mary's, Dalton-in-Furness, and sings with one of his sons in the church choir. During the service an interesting poem is read that mentions how bells can touch a persons life:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was filled with sorrow at the tragic death of his wife in a fire in 1861. The Civil War broke out the same year, and it seemed this was an additional punishment. Two years later, Longfellow was again saddened to learn that his own son had been seriously wounded in the Army of the Potomac.

Sitting down to his desk, one Christmas Day, he heard the church bells ringing. It was in this setting that Longfellow wrote these lines:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
There is no peace on earth, I said;
"For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep.
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!"

Received donation of £24.50 from 17th Barrow (St Perran's) Cub Scouts, that the cubs had collectively earned by doing chores as part of their community badges. Well Done, and thank-you!

Peter Fawcett - author of HAND-BELL RINGING The Living Tradition - Ringing For Gold informs me that Barrow-in-Furness St James hand-bell ringers entered the British Open (handbell ringing competition) in 1871 and 1873. The conductor was John Marshall (who is not listed as a member of LACR, so will have to see if mentioned in Tower Log Book).

There is a copy of the book in the reference section in Kendal, and we are trying to secure another copy for the reference section/local studies in the library in Barrow.

We have a sizable collection of hand bells dating from this period, but they do need restoring (a future project, or perhaps from any surplus funds we raise from our main restoration).

If you wish to get your own copy of Peter Fawcett's book, please visit www.ringingforgold.co.uk for more information.

Presentation of £300 cheque from NW Evening Mail by the editor Jonathan Lee features in two page article in the newspaper (pages 14 and 15). :D

TIME TAKES ITS TOLL ON CHURCH BELLS

The main text and reduced quality images of the feature article can be viewed on-line here

Better quality images can be seen in PHOTO GALLERY 7

Visit from 17th Barrow (St Perran's) Cubs

Ten Cubs with Akela, Shere Khan, and Bagheera, came to St James to do some community help, and busily polished brass in the church.
They were rewarded afterwards with a chance to ring rounds, queens and tittums on 12 handbells, plain hunt into reverse rounds on 6 handbells, and ring the tune Pop Goes The Weasel! ... All were rung very successfully.
The Cubs were taken up to see the Church bells in the tower. Many gasped when they saw how big the bells were, and they asked many interesting questions while they learnt about the project to restore the bells.
The cubs are also going to do chores around their homes over half-term holiday to earn coins to donate toward the restoration project. Well Done! and Thank You!

The St James' Bells Appeal committee are pleased to announce that we have received a generous donation of £5,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation

The North West Evening Mail has kindly pledged a very welcome £300 to the Bells Appeal

The cheque will be presented in a few weeks time. We look forward to receiving the cheque and providing a progress update for publication.

See BBC Webpage About this Bellringing across the nation
Mark Latimer agreed to turn out at the allotted time (8.12am) to chime the 2nd bell for 3 minutes so that St James could take part in the nationwide ringing 'Art' to celebrate the start of the Olympics.
The 'artistic' credentials may or may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is clearly a once in a lifetime opportunity to enter into the spirit of celebration for the Olympics. Unfortunately unable to ring all 8 bells until restored (see BELL RESTORATION APPEAL to help.)

SPONSORED 135 MILE SWIM COMPLETE ON 135th ANNIVERSARY OF BELLS!

Tower correspondent Andy Pollock has completed his fundraising marathon swim. He began in September 2011 and has swum 135 miles breaststroke, overcoming set-backs along the way (e.g. seriously torn ligaments in foot/ankle).

He has raised over £900 for the St James' Church Bells Restoration Appeal, as well as over £250 for scout minibus, and £74 for Marie Curie Cancer Care along the way (by taking part in the national Swimathon)

His achievement was reported in a full page article in the NW Evening Mail on Monday July 30th edition on page 8 - see SCOUT LEADER BOOSTS CHARITIES WITH SWIM

For many more details about the swim, please visit Sponsored Swim Status

Andy Pollock and family took part and represented Barrow tower in the branch treasure hunt - on foot in Cartmel this year, and came joint first, so a tie-breaker was needed, and we were pipped!

Many thanks to Eileen for setting the treasure hunt. We all had a very enjoyable time.

Branch 6-bell striking competition at Ulverston.

Unfortunately Barrow tower were unable to get enough lapsed and local ringers together to enter a team this year, but Andy Pollock went along anyway, and was encouraged to have a go in a 'scratch' team made up of the youngest ringer from each of the other teams that entered. Unfortunately a misunderstanding about how many courses of Grandsire Doubles were necessary the calling lead to just half the required changes being rung! The ringing standard was rather good and getting much better as we continued. This was very pleasing for such a young team (mostly), without any previous practice together. Pity our team scored more faults because we had to be penalised for ringing too few changes (Ooops!).

Five teams competed (Bowness, Dalton, Flookburgh, Kendal, and Ulverston) with the scratch team taking part just for the fun of it. Dalton-in-Furness were eventual winners, retaining the trophy, and narrowly beating Kendal, a single fault seperating the two teams.

There is no online copy of the article, but if you visit archives or NW Evening Mail offices, you can see the article on the community news page, p28 or Thursday August 9th edition of the NW Evening Mail

Feature in NW Evening Mail - "Ring in the changes and save Barrow's last bells"

Double page feature in NW Evening Mail about St James' bells and restoration and ringing at St Mary's Dalton.

Received a generous donation of £500 from the Carlisle Diocesan Guild of Bell-Ringers. Brilliant thank you!

ST JAMES BELLS OPEN DAYS

On Saturday afternoon the Mayor (Cllr Wendy Maddox) came along and returned later in civvies to enjoy the various activities, including handbell ringing as you can see in the gallery.

Hands-on! There was opportunities to try your hand at splicing two pieces of bell rope to join them together.

Hands-on! There was a Wombel bell simulator (more info) that had been kindly provided by Yorkshire Association of Change Ringers (YACR), and featured on BBC Radio Cumbria on Sunday morning. The local newspaper also provided good publicity with a feature on the open day including image of Wombel, and "memories" page showing tower photos of ringing outings in years gone by - one member of the congregation has since named most people on two of the three photographs, which have been annotated in PHOTO GALLERY 4. The Wombel proved very popular, as did the handbell ringing with Keith Newby - one visitor said "very interesting especially the handbells. I thought I'd pop in for 20 mins, here 2 hours later."

There was a powerpoint presentation of the restoration project plans, Virtual Belfry and several videos all running.

1. BBC Four - Still Ringing After All These Years (Short History of Bells)
2. Guy Fox - How to Make a Bell - 10 minute film short suitable for children
3. Worcester - Bells in the City (Ringing the Changes for an English Tradition) - 6 mins
4. Peppercorn - Up the Spiral Staircase: exploring the social side of bellringing - 5 mins

There were bell simulators e.g. Virtual Belfry

There was a stall for the local woodturners who we hope will recycle some of the old frame, headstocks and stays into memorabilia. Other stalls for Leck Construction who will do the building work and were showing images of their involvement with restoration of the roof and West window a decade earlier.

There was a constant stream of visitors wanting to take the tour of the tower to learn of the history of the bells, see the sorry state of our bells, and examples of good fixtures and fittings loaned by our bell-hangers Nicholson Engineering. Many also took the opportunity to chime the 2nd

The members of the PCC manned stalls for tombola, refreshments, cake stall, bric-a-brac and grand raffle, and which collectively raised over £540 for the restoration project.
We would like to express our special thanks to those local businesses who generously supported our fundraising by donating raffle prizes:

• DW Sports Fitness
• Nuffield Health
• Dandy's Furniture Store
• Stollers Furniture World
• Searle Audio
• Howdens Joinery Co.
• Heaths Toymaster
• Furness Railway (JD Weatherspoon)
• Salvanas (Italian Restaurant)
• Coffee Bean (Cafe)
• Winfields
• Baby Bitz
• Lidl
• Tesco
• Apollo Cinemas

The objective of the open days was not just fundraising (though this was welcome). It was also an opportunity to connect with the community, to provide an opportunity for them to find out more about the project, and for us to seek their opinions that could hopefully be used to demonstrate community interest and support for the restoration project. Over 100 people wrote in the visitor log and 98% said it was very good, 2% Good and 0% OK/Bad. This will certainly help our applications to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Just one person had any objections, and they were concerned that lowering the bells in the tower would spoil the sound, but did not leave a comment in the visitor log (despite being recommended to do so).

We now move on to securing the faculty to be permitted to begin work, after which we can make formal application to the Heritage Lottery Fund who have been talking ball-park figures that could be sufficient to swing into action. The current financial based on early estimates, adjusted for the impact of VAT following revocation of zero rating on listed building projects

CONGRATULATIONS FRAZER & ADELE!

One of our ringers Frazer Smith has married Adele Pugh at St Mary's Church on Walney Island.

Wishing you both our best wishes for a long and happy life together.

Later featured in LoveWeekend supplement in NW Evening Mail on 8th September, and updated on website here on 11th September.

Branch Ringing Outing to Towers in North Cheshire

	Time	Tower	Tenor
			No.	Cwt	Qtr	Lbs
	10:00 - 11:00	St James, CHRISTLETON	8	12	1	26	Stained Glass Window at St Andrew's Church, Tarvin
	11:15 - 12:00	St Andrew, TARVIN	6	8	1	8
	13:15 - 14:15	St Helen, TARPORLEY	8	11	0	7
	14:45 - 15:30	St Mary the Virgin, WEAVERHAM	6	9	0	23
	16:00 - 17:00	St Matthew, STRETTON	8	8	3	18
	17:15 - 18:30	All Saints, DARESBURY	8	16	1	5

A great day was enjoyed by everone who went along, despite the regrettable casualties of two broken stays during the visit to St Andrew TARVIN.

A ringing outing is always a pleasure, and several tower outings are documented in the tower log book as far back as 1886 when there was a trip to Hornby, Melling and Kirkby Lonsdale.

It is always a pleasure to ring at unfamiliar churches - each of which is a gem in the stunning heritage of this country, and each offering different history, architectural features, ringing experiences, and surprises!

Particularly unusual and interesting on this ringing trip were the alcoves/recesses in the walls at Christleton for the ringer to stand in while ringing their bell! There was a beautiful modern stained glass window at Tarvin, and finally those of us unfamiliar with All Saints church in Daresbury discovered that there was a connection with Lewis Carroll. His father was vicar in Daresbury between 1827 to 1843, and Lewis Carroll spent his childhood there up until he was 11 years old. There is now an exhibition in the Church in addition to the stained glass windows with Alice in Wonderland characters, and there are even mats in the ringing room which have mad hatters depicted on them! Well worth a visit, see http://www.lewiscarrollcentre.org.uk/

• £500 pledged by Hadfield Trust (thankyou);
• Cumbria Waste Management Environmental Trust would visit tomorrow in response to application
• Travis Perkins have expressed an interest in support for project with materials and logistics.
• Your Heritage interested in project to the tune of a possible 5-figure sum with some evidence of community involvement and support

• Andy Pollock has setup a splendid new website, and also submitted an article for Proclaim!
• Elaine Dunkley of BBC Look North West was unable to attend today but hopes to manage to visit on 21 April
• Open Days being planned for June 22-24 to invite public to learn more about the project and bellringing in general.