Luke & Anne Serjeant
Residents of Little Horwood 1996 – 2009
It was Paddy McCowen who first persuaded our family of four to learn to ring bells. Paddy was trying to get a team of bell ringers together to ring in the new Millennium. Daniel who was eleven at the time and Emily was eight or nine. It was around 1997 we think when we all started to learn to ring the bells.
When we started to learn there was no platform to ring from so the bell ropes were very long and difficult to control and sometimes got the better of us. The ringing room was also used as a store and was full of church clutter. Emily, being small, had to stand on a little platform. This was still too short for her so Paddy built a new bigger one for her.
Ringing was a challenging new skill for us all. If we lost control of a rope it would lash about all over the place. On one occasion Emily who was a tiny thing back then, once got pulled up by the rope and deposited back on the floor with quite a bump. Undaunted, she went straight back to ringing again. On another occasion a rope went out of control and tangled itself around a tea urn which flipped up in the air and crashed back down, fortunately not hitting any of us and not full of hot tea! We desperately needed a ringing platform!!
When we got the new platform it made a real difference. The bells were much easier and safer to ring. We were all new ringers apart from Paddy and plain hunting was about the limit of our abilities back then. Paddy was the ever patient tower captain, giving us lots of praise and encouragement.
We rang for weddings which was fun. We would ring for the arrival of the bride, and then we would take a break in the pub next door to the church (‘The Shoulder of Mutton’) for a little refreshment before ringing again at the end of the ceremony. Dan and Emily liked ringing for weddings…at £10 a rope it was a nice bit of extra pocket money!
We rang on church fete day. We had to dash from the tower to the Recreation Ground as soon as we stopped ringing as that was the time the fete was opened and we had to be there to manage the cake stall.
And we did ring for the Millennium! What a privilege! We rang for a long time along with hundreds of other bell ringers all over the country. The proof is on a little brass plaque which was installed at the foot of the stairs up to the ringing platform with all four of our names on it.
Ringing in Little Horwood was always fun and sociable. We all took a trip to the bell tower in Long Crendon once and realised how proficient ringers were in other towers. We weren’t always that serious in our tower I’m afraid, but we have many happy memories of the ringing in the company of others, and it is great that the tradition is continuing and that we were able to learn a skill which we could take with us to other areas of the country. Luke & Anne Serjeant – Little Horwood Residents from 1996 to 2009 now living in Eccleshall Staffordshire.