496 - does it ring a bell?
Bell Sunday is a few weeks away, but Coleshill ringers are ready with a supply of bell stays and a well maintained set of ten bells.
Click here, scroll along to 44:15 minutes or thereabouts to hear a Canterbury Cathedral congregation sing bellringers’ hymn Unchanging God - number 496 in Hymns Ancient and Modern hymnal -not to be confused with Sweet hour of prayer, number 496 in the Methodist hymnal, the words of which were written by blind preacher William Walford in Coleshill.
Stays are the vertical wooden posts bolted to the bell headstock (far right picture) which keep the bells safely upright and ready to be rung. The bells in the picture are “down.” Each stay is machined to a particular size - four above fits bell 4, and so on.
Stays break occasionally and are replaceable - the one left foreground is an original from when the bells were augmented from eight to ten in the mid 1970s. It finally cracked after decades of sometimes over-enthusiastic pulling of the bell rope.
You can learn how to handle a bell. To ding dong merrily on high join us now to start your free lessons in time to ring for Christmas events.