I first rang at Little Horwood on 19-3-83.
From my childhood, as we passed the Shoulder of Mutton each year in the family car to visit our relation in Deanshanger, we knew of our family connection to the village. My grandfather had grown up in the pub by the church, where his father was the publican.
My great uncle Ernest Frederick Tompkins is on the war memorial inside the church.
So I was excited when I went on a ringing tour locally on March 19, 1983, where we rung at Buckingham, Winslow, Mursley, Drayton Parslow, Newton Longville, Linslade as well as Little Horwood. It was the first time I had been inside the church.
My ringing records recall that Little Horwood was the fiftieth tower I had rung at (and my second ring of five). My records note there was a long draught, and the church was next to what had been my great granddad’s pub.
There were 5 bells (9-2-24) in G .
I remember we rung the bells from the ground floor. The long draught must have required skill to ring the bells well.
I wouldn’t have had much time in March 1983 to look round the church (as the group would want to get onto the next tower), but have been into the church on other occasions since, and noted the new raised gallery from where the ringers now rung. I was pleased to see an interest was being taken in the bells.
In the years since 1983, we have found more about our family history connections to Little Horwood.
My grandfather on my mother’s side, Charles Walter Mumford Tompkins lived there as a boy, and some of his siblings were born there. I have a photocopy of the 1891 census which shows his father
(Thomas James Tompkins) as a Farmer and Publican at the Shoulder of Mutton in Little Horwood.
Thomas Tompkins’ wife, was Elizabeth, and her father was called Ishmael Mumford,
and in a photocopy I have of the 1851 census, he is shown as the Innkeeper and Grazier at the Shoulder of Mutton.
His wife was Mary and her parents’ were Thomas and Elizabeth Mills, whose gravestone you can see under the trees to the left, as you walk up the path from the pub to the church.
Little did I know as I walked up the path to the tower door in 1983 that I would be going by the graves of my great-great-great-grandparents, Thomas and Elizabeth Mills.
We are also related in someway by marriage to the Curtis family of Little Horwood.
At a later census, 1901 or 1911, Thomas James Tompkins is shown as living in Tile Cottage in Little Horwood
One family tale is about my granddad’s father who let him ride a horse to school in Great Horwood, but when my grandfather left school, the horse was sold – and my granddad was not happy about that!