Benjamin Kipling, David Warwick (c), Nigel Woodruff, Christopher Jenkins
ALL Saints Church in Westbury celebrated the 100th anniversary of the casting of their bells by completing a full peal on the 27th December.
Bell ringers marked the 100-year anniversary by recreating the full peal a hundred years after the bells first rung out in 1921.
The event was well attended by locals who took the opportunity to hear the impressive set of eight bells. A large screen was also set up in the church for those who wanted to see the bell ringers in action.
The assistant tower captain, Chris Jenkins, said “We started about 10am after a few final adjustments of the ropes and getting everything sorted. We rang continuously for 3 hrs 41 mins and the day was a great success.
“The current ring of eight bells at the church were cast in 1921. They replaced a very heavy set of six bells which were cast from a mix of different founders, with the earliest dating back to the 1600s. There were plans in 1765 to augment the bells from six to eight and it took an awful long time before that happened – it holds the record for one of the longest augmentations in the history of bell ringing.”
Chris is also the Devizes branch ringing master and the current chairman of the Eddington Ringing Centre.
“The bells we rang on the day were first cast in 1921, and on the 27th December 1921, they rang the first full peal of the new bells, so we wanted to do the same and recreate a bit of local history.
“I started to ring bells at All Saints in 1997 as a recruit for the millennium campaign so this means a lot on a personal level. I feel very privileged to be part of the team to celebrate the hundred-year anniversary of the full peal.”
