Ring for the King
Throughout the British Isles plans are being made to ring bells to mark the Coronation of HM King Charles III
For hundreds of years church bells have rung out to celebrate special occasions, in remembrance of others and to signify special events. In 2022 bells rang to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and to respectfully marked her passing.
Fancy a go?
Ringers throughout the country are opening up their towers to invite anyone interested in learning to ring the opportunity to join in on Coronation Day - Saturday 6th May 2023
It does take a little while to get the coordination of ringing - a bit like learning to ride a bike - so we are offering a 7 week course which should take you from zero knowledge of ringing up to the point where you can ring confidently on Coronation Day.
What's in the 7 week course?
There are 4 ringing towers in Guernsey; Town, Vale, Forest and St Pierre du Bois. The bells in each tower are all a little different, some have more bells than others, some have heavier bells but they all ring in the same way.
The training course will take place on Tuesdays starting at 7.30pm on March 7th and coninuing each Tuesday (except for the two in the school holiday) until Coronation day.
The first 4 weeks of the course will be at Elizabeth College making use of their set of 6 training bells. The sessions will be a mixture of practical time on the ropes and some theory about how the mechanisms work and how we make our music out of patterns.
The following three weeks will take place at different towers to give you a taste of the different towers and how they feel to ring.
There likely will be ringing at all 4 towers on Coronation Day so you can choose where would be easiest and join in the ringing on the day.
For more information and/or to register for the course please email guernseyringfortheking@gmail.com
If you're interested in ringing but can't make Tuesday evening you can still get in touch and we can try to accomodate you.
