Bells ring out in Wellingborough for 100th anniversary

Bells have been ringing across a town to celebrate a bell-ringers' centenary.

The 100th anniversary of the Peterborough Diocesan Guild of Church Bellringers was marked with a full peal at All Hallow's Church, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

The specially written full peal involved eight people and took about three-and-a-half hours to complete.

The guild held its inaugural meeting at the Granville Hotel in Wellingborough on 5 January 1924.

The guild covers churches across the diocese of Peterborough, including Northamptonshire as well as Rutland and the area around Peterborough.

The bells at All Hallow's were rung in a series of 5,100 sequences in a peal specially composed for the occasion by one of the ringers, Richard Allton.

There has been no regular ringing at the church since the Covid lockdowns and Bob Addie, a churchwarden at All Hallow's, enjoyed hearing the bells again.

"It was really 'wow, this is good, this is what it is all about'," he said.

"Now, we need to grow on that [by] encouraging people to learn to ring."

Churches have been suffering a shortage of ringers in recent years, with some sharing their team with neighbouring places of worship and some sets of bells falling silent.

Cathy Dixon, from the guild, said: "We've got about 900 members currently who are spread across our area, which includes about 250 different sets of bells.

"We haven't got enough ringers and it does take years to train up to be at the standard to ring peals like the group did in Wellingborough."

A recruitment campaign to find enough new ringers to allow bells to be rung across the country to mark the King's coronation attracted around 2,000 recruits, but it is not known how many have stayed on.

The guild has celebrated its anniversary in other ways, including the launch of centenary clothing and the production of a commemorative jigsaw showing many of the churches in the diocese.

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