East Garston

Like many village churches, All Saints' has a ring of six bells, the oldest of these is the second which is inscribed with the date 1667. Many family names associated with the the village over the years have been involved with bellringing including the Woodley family. William Woodley was tower captain for many years until his death. George Woodley and his two brothers rang a muffled peal at his funeral and George continued ringing as tower captain until 1947 - a total of sixty years. This achievement was recorded in the Newbury Weekly News in 1951.

The bellringers displays were packed with information in both text and photographic format. Profiles of each of our ringers along with their guild certificates were amongst many items on view.
There was also much history recorded on the display boards including reference to The Rev. C.W.O Jenkin who was born in East Garston in 1874. Learned to ring in Lambourn and East Garston as a boy and finally Married in East Garston in September 1898 . Jenkin was a prolific ringer who rang his first peal - a memorized sequence of 5040 changes lasting 3 hours - at Cambridge in 1894.

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East Garstons' four regular bellringers were in attendance to give advise and encouragement to any one that may have expressed an interest in ringing. They were also there of course to give bell ringing demonstrations throughout the weekend.

An added bonus for the ringers and any potential new recruit - was the arrival of Marcus Allum, the ringing master for the Newbury branch of the Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers, who kindly gave up his weekend to help out where necessary. Marcus is an advanced ringer and has all the skills needed to teach from scratch, as a consequence his arrival made it possible for non ringers to actually have ago themselves. It's fair to say that he was kept very busy during the two days.

Explanations on how a bell rings and what the various bell positions and terms mean were demonstrated using this model built by Marcus

Mark had also rigged up a direct video link from bell tower to ringing chamber. This gave live pictures of the bells in action and proved very useful when trying to explain to non ringers exactly how bells responded to the various rope movements.