Old ropes final ring!

This Sunday morning saw the last times the current set of ropes will ring out the bells of All Saints Church.

The current ropes, with the exception of the Number 4, were replaced when the bells were rehung and augmented it late 1999. The rope on bell No. 4 broke three years ago and a replace was brought over from Gressenhall.

Over the past year and a half, the ropes have started to show their wear with bell No. 5 in particular starting to fray. The decision was taken to replace all 6 ropes, with one rope going over to Beetley to replace a recently broken rope, and the remaining 3 being retained as spares (rope No. 5 will be removed).

The Drama of the Cracked Stay!

There was some drama at the practice night tonight as the stay on number 5 dropped out whilst it was being run by a new learner, Lee Fox. During the early stages of learning the new ringing learns to ring one  of the strokes at a time with the tutor keeping hold of the rope at all times. Whilst Lee was ringing the handstroke with Brian the stay dropped out (its not really supposed to do this!). Brian safely got the bell back down so the stay could be retrevied. Upon inspection we learnt that the stay had rotten through however it was impossible to see this on routine inspections.