Centenary of the end of WWI - 11th November 2018

Ringing Remembers - Ring out for Peace - Battle's Over

In the evening of this Remembrance Sunday, the Bugler ascended the Tower of Leatherhead Parish Church to sound The Last Post at 18.55 followed by the Rouse.

This was followed at 19.05 by the bells of the Parish Church.

This was the last of the bell ringing sessions that day. The articles below from Leatherhead's Parish magazine describes the full involvement of Leatherhead's bell ringers in the day locally and as part of much wider commemorations.

from the Leatherhead Parish Magazine for November 2018

When the Armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918, ringers young and old across this nation ran to their churches to ring out a spontaneous message of relief and joy at the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front. For many people, the sound of those bells was the first indication that the War had ended.

By that day in 1918, fourteen hundred bell ringers had died in the War.

This year, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War, the government, together with the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, initiated a campaign called Ringing Remembers, a nationwide project to honour the 1,400 bell ringers lost during the War. Part of the initiative was to recruit and train 1400 bell ringers in time for this year's Armistice Day, symbolically representing the ringers who had been lost in the War. At Leatherhead Parish Church we have been very busy carefully training our own two recruits: Stefan and Alastair. Both will be taking their place in the belfry alongside their fellow ringers on November 11th.

Ringing bells on Remembrance Sunday has always been a special and very different occasion from normal service ringing, this year all the more so. If you pass near the church on that day you will hear ringing commence at 9.45 am with our bells half-muffled. This means that all 10 bells will sound once loudly and then you will hear a second, softer sound like an echo. The result is haunting, sad and extraordinarily beautiful and affecting. There is a special skill attached to ringing bells half-muffled and we shall be ringing music designed to bring out the best of the sound.

For more information about Battle's Over and a full list of the day's events which start at 6 am, view https://www.brunopeek.co.uk where you can also click on "Your Guide to Taking Part" for more details of participants, locations and times.

At 10.30 am there will be a pause as the service commences. Then at 10.50 am we will begin the most challenging but also, we believe, the most beautiful ringing of the day, stopping at 11 am exactly to join the entire nation in silence.

In addition, however, this year more than 3,000 churches in the UK and still more churches all around the world have been asked to remove the muffles from our bells at midday and then to commence ringing in unison at 12.30 pm exactly.

The idea is to replicate the 16 events of 1918 and to celebrate the centenary of the day on which the guns fell silent. Every church in this nation and beyond has been asked to ring a piece of its choosing. At Leatherhead we shall be attempting a quarter peal of Grandsire Triples.

That is not, however, the end of the day's events. Many months ago, Leatherhead ringers responded to an appeal for churches to Ring out for Peace as part of Battle's Over, a nationwide tribute to the millions killed or wounded in battle and those on the home front who struggled amidst pain and loss to help ensure freedom survived.

Among other commemorative events taking place on November 11th, at 6.55 pm buglers will sound the Last Post, and at 7 pm more than 1,000 Beacons of Light will be lit, symbolising an end to the darkness of war and a return to the light of peace, while at 7.05 pm precisely, bell ringers at 1,000 cathedrals and churches will ring out their bells across the nation and beyond in celebration of peace.

Leatherhead's bell ringers will be among them. [And Leatherhead RBL's bugler.]

For more information about Ringing Remembers, visit: https://www.big-ideas.org/project/ringing-remembers/

from the Leatherhead Parish magazine for December 2018

Ringing Remembers - November 11th

On Sunday, November 11th for the first time in many years the baffles in the bell chamber that are normally closed to limit the sound of Leatherhead's bells were opened on all four sides of the tower so that the ringing of the bells would carry far and wide and accompany people walking to the War Memorial on this special Armistice Centenary Remembrance Sunday.

The morning team - including our two Ringing Remembers recruits

Between 9.45 and 10.30 am precisely the bells were rung half-muffled to produce the alternating loud and soft, echoing tones that reflect the melancholy, serious nature of the occasion. This is a very special style of ringing that makes extra demands on the ringers' skills and involves pieces that can usually be heard only once a year, on Remembrance Sunday. Yet the hardest challenge came at 10.50 am precisely, when three teams of ringers lined up in turn to ring "Whole Pull and Stand''.

This is something that even the most experienced ringers find difficult to execute properly and in practice sessions we had rarely managed it to our satisfaction, so there was some anxiety. Yet on the day itself there was no hesitation: every team member was determined; every team excelled. The ringing culminated in Rex, our Vice Captain, tolling the huge tenor bell, stopping at 11 am exactly for the two minute silence which we observed in the belfry along with the rest of the nation.

At 12.30 pm exactly some of you may have heard the bells again, this time with the muffles removed, as our team of Grandsire Triples ringers joined churches and cathedrals throughout the land Ringing for Peace: Armistice 100.

Two of the people ringing this Remembrance Sunday were doing so for the first time. When the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers and the UK Government ambitiously called for recruits to symbolically represent the 1,400 bell ringers who died during WWI, they scarcely anticipated that 2,792 people would step forward nationwide.

Among them were Stefan, who joined us last November, and Alastair who recently commented, "Hard to believe that I had never rung a church bell on the 10th of September and nearly two months later I have managed to start ringing bells in rounds."

Known as our Ringing Remembers recruits, both played a full part in the ringing on the morning and again during the evening of November 11th, each proudly wearing the badges they were awarded for their endeavours.
                     
For all of us, that evening was a very moving experience as we joined towers around the world simultaneously ringing to mark the international Battle's Over commemorations. At 6.55 pm exactly, having mounted to the top of the church tower, our bugler, Cliff Lennon, played the Last Post, followed by the Rouse, intently listened to by the bell ringers in the ringing chamber below before we again commenced ringing at 7.05 pm precisely.

Leatherhead Parish Church Tower, as the Bugler played. 11 November 2018

Bugler Cliff Lennon at the top of the tower of Leatherhead Parish Church image via Julian Steed

We hope that maybe you did too.

[Apart from Guildford Cathedral, St  Mary & St Nicholas Leatherhead was apparently the only parish church in Surrey which had a bugler participate in Battle's Over.]