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 Mystery Solved

The mystery of the odd struck four has been solved! Over the past few weeks the number four has been becoming increasingly difficult to ring. An inspection of the bell found that the clapper had worked itself loose and was therefore spinning around in the bell.  A quick tighten of the bolt which holds the clapper and the bell seems as good as new. The real test will be Friday at the practice night. Further inspection also found that then tenor bell was also suffering the same problem.

Tower Tidy

A small number of ringers took on the mammoth task of cleaning the three chambers of All Saints' Tower. Sarah Seaman, Shelia Smith, Mark Tweedie, Lee Fox and Aaron Hall swept, hoovered, dusted and polished the Tower throughout the four hour cleaning marathon. The result was a spotless tower in which in will be a pleasure to ring.

The ringers also took the opportunity to treat the six ropes in the tower with rope lubricant, to help preserve the ropes. This was a rather messy job but good fun. The ringers got to ring in their tidy tower on Friday. Click here to see some photos from the day

The Holy Week Big Clean!

Holy week is generally a quiet time in the bell tower, as ringing is suspended for the week, however this year there was sound coming from the bell tower all be it a strange sound...the sound of hoovering!
A small team of ringers took on the huge task of cleaning All Saint's mighty bell tower from top to bottom. Aaron Hall, Brian Laing, Claire Willetts and Janet Yeomans worked from 10am till 3:00pm making sure every part of the tower from the bell chamber to the ringing chamber was cleaned of dust and dirt which had built up over the last few years. The opportunity was also taken to carry out some much needed maintenance work including replacing a worn rope on the tenor bell as well as adjusting ropes of some of the other bells. Click here to see some photos from the cleaning day.

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. 

...and On

Last month routine maintenance was carried out on the six bells of All Saints. Whilst this routine maintenance took place a question arose about how the clappers should sit inside the bells. After Brian conducted some enquiries it appeared that all the clappers were positioned in the bells wrong. So Brian and Aaron returned up the tower to carry out some more work. In the worse cases some of the clappers were out of place by over 5 inches. After several hours of work the clappers were all repositioned. The test came the following practice night when the band got to ring the bells again! Everyone commented on the vast improvement of the bells and how different they sounded. The only negative point was that work needs to be carried out on the third clapper as the bearings are starting to go. 

The Maintenance goes on....

You may have heard the bells of All Saints ringing for a few minutes on Thursday last week and this afternoon. This is as we have been carry out some routine maintenance on the bells of All Saints. A huge thanks goes out to Brian Laing who gave up his time to help Aaron look over the bells and make sure everything is ok with the bells. Apart from a few nuts and bolts needing tightening everything seems ok!

Keeping in good order

On Friday 15th April work was carried out on the bells to correct the odd struckness of the treble and third bells. Peter Trent, the Diocesan Bells Advisor, took a look at the bells of All Saints and along with Aaron and suggested work which might need doing as well as help Aaron sort out a few problems there had been with the bells.  It is hoped that  over the coming months the work will be carried out to get the bells in the best condition they can be.