On Saturday 10th March a group of visiting bellringers successfully rang a peal in St Swithuns. The ringing of bells has for centuries been a way of not only calling people to church but to ring out in celebration.
It was a happy coincidence that this peal happened as churchwarden Janet Crouch and her husband Brian celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary, Jean Wiseman had a ‘significant’ birthday, and Claire Maynard celebrated her engagement.
Ringing a peal is not an easy thing to do. It involves ringing the bells in different orders on each round of 5 rings (in our case) 5040 times! (factorial 7 for those of you mathematically minded). Not only does that involve a lot of concentration and energy but it took 3 hours to complete. The bells of St Swithuns are very old (4 of them cast around 1640) and not easy to ring so it proved to be quite a challenge.
Ringing peals at St Swithuns is a very rare event – in fact records show that it has only happened twice before – in 1913 and 2004. For more about bellringing in Great Chishill visit the bellringing page. tenor.jpg