I’m going to start with the AGM, which was held on Saturday. Thanks you to the Kettering branch for the arrangements, including the weather, where the sun induced people to spill out of the Church House at Barton Seagrave onto the lawns behind.
Guild AGM
The AGM was held on Saturday. After a service including a pop quiz on bells, a splendid tea was enjoyed in the adjacent Church House. This was followed by the AGM, at which Simon Dixon stepped down as Master & Jim Bence was elected. Jim & Gwynneth White stood down as Report Editors and Nick Watts was elected. Cat Hemmington was elected as Youth Officer. The post of PRO remains vacant.
Recruitment & Training Officer.
In my last mail I sent out the role description for the Recruitment & Training Officer, which had been initiated at the GMC meeting in May, with an introduction from Simon Dixon. At the AGM, the President pushed for a deferral of the appointment until September as only very short notice had been given to members. On a vote, this proposal was agreed by the meeting. Unfortunately, the existing nomination was not acknowledged, which was regrettable. Concern was expressed from the floor about how this hand been handled from the Chair. As a result, an apology will be sent to the person concerned, thanking them for their willingness to stand and with the sincere hope that they will carry over their nomination until September.
Nominations for this post are, therefore, still open and can be sent to me before the Summer Festival. The role description is attached.
Social Event – date for the diary.
After the success of the social events for the Centenary, there will be a social event factored into the Guild’s calendar. We’re starting with a Quiz and fish’n’chip supper on 14th February 2026. Location TBC and details to follow nearer the time, but please put the date in your diary. And let’s see if I can remember to bring the Guild’s quiz trophy with me this time!
Teachers and ringing
Part of the Ringing 2030 project has been to produce a set of lesson plans suitable for Keystages 2 & 3. The plans contain lessons with different curriculum focus covering multiple different areas through different aspects of ringing. It aims to familiarise children with ringing, it is not trying to teach them to ring, but that could obviously be an offshoot of this.
There is now a desire to have teachers of these key stages look at the plans and trial them. They need to work for teachers other than the author of the plans. There will be a zoom meeting on the 20th July. If you are interested, please register. If you interested but can’t attend, please contact Andrea Haynes, who is running the project: andrea.haynes@cccbr.org.uk. She’s in Rugby direction, so our area’s in a good position for testing0.
Striking analysis
You may have heard of Hawkear, a system that takes a recording of a piece of ringing and can analyse it for striking and present a graphical display of the ringing – helpful for those of us who think visually. It has not been widely applicable, as the system has to be trained to detect the strike for the bells at the specific tower at which it is installed.
Oliver Rice had a bit of spare time and has generated an app that can take a recording of any tower and present a similar visual analysis of the striking. He’s called it Brenda, which stands for Bell REcording with Novel Data Analysis. He apologises to anyone called Brenda!
Oliver posted that “After a month or so of reasonably intense beta testing, I think my striking web app is probably ready for public consumption… I still expect there to be plenty of bugs — please let me know if you find any! I also imagine it’ll crash this evening if lots of people use it, but we’ll see. Many thanks to my beta testers for finding problems and suggesting new things.
Since my last post I’ve added several new features, including a plaintext ‘striking report’ aimed at providing useful feedback, and a ‘touch library’ where you can create and share collections of ringing.
It can be found at https://brenda.oekrice.com/ . If you don’t have any recordings yet but would like to see what it can do, I’ve uploaded some example touches to https://brenda.oekrice.com/Analyse_Striking…
It has been tested successfully at around 50 towers with a wide variety of bell weights and acoustics, and usually works with ringing chamber recordings unless the bells are particularly indistinct or quiet. It also works nicely with most recordings from the 12 bell website if you’d like to try that.”
You obviously need a recording of a piece of ringing that doesn’t contain too much other noise and each bell can be heard. If anyone tries it, we’d be interested to know what you make of it.
Wicken church roof
I’ve rung at Wicken several times, but never realised that the chancel ceiling is significant. It is of papier mache and is now to be restored. I’ll try and remember to have a look next time I ring there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgrdxey9gxo
Dates for the Diary
Guild 10 Bell Practice Saturday 12th July. 10:30 – 12:30 Higham Ferrers.
Guild 10 Bell Practice Saturday 12th July. 10:30 – 12:30 TBC
Guild Summer Festival Saturday 13th September. Ringing at Yarwell & Wansford, Contest and evening ringing at Castor.
And Branch events.
Thrapston Branch Practice Thursday 19th June 2:30 Wadenhoe
Wellingborough Surprise Practice Saturday 21st June 10:30 Woodford
Daventry Branch Practice Saturday 21st June 3:30 Church Stowe, 6:30 Pattishall
Culworth Branch Practice Saturday 21st June 4:00 Lois Weedon, 6:30 Pattishall
Towcester Branch Practice Saturday 28th June 10:30 Greens Norton
Northampton Branch Practice Saturday 28th June 2:30 Duston
Thrapston Branch Practice Wednesday 2nd July 7:00 Titchmarsh
Guilsborough Branch Practice Saturday 5th July 3:00 Great Oxendon, 6:00 East Farndon
Peterborough Surprise Minor Social Sunday 6th July 2:30 Nassington
Peterborough 8 bell practice Friday 11th July, 7:30 Castor
Kettering Branch Practice Saturday 12th July, Weldon 2:00, Corby 3:15.
I’d like to thank members for my repeated election as Secretary and to assure them that I will always work to what I believe to be the best interests of the Guild.
Thanks
Helen
Helen Allton
Secretary: Peterborough Diocesan Guild of Church Bellringers
Facebook: www.facebook.com/PDGCBR
Website: www.pdg.org.uk
e-mail: secretary@pdg.org.uk
Peterborough Branch 
