On November 11 1918, church bells rang out all over the land to signal the end of the First World War. One hundred years on, the bells are pealing once again. But this time it is to mark the individual passing of every fallen Great War soldier who, in the sad shires back home, had once been a ringer.
The commemoration was the idea of Alan Regin, an avid ringer who hails from Surrey. Born in Farnham, he moved as a child to Ottershaw, where campanology first struck a chord.
“My brother Jack and I started to ring there and, from the first moment, I was completely hooked,” he recalls. “Christ Church, Ottershaw had a ring of six bells and there were two other brothers our age (11 and 12) who were learning at the same time. Between the four of us, there was competition and camaraderie and we are all still ringing today.”
Regin’s enthusiasm for bell-ringing took him to London where, in between peals, he became a civil servant and then spent over 30 years working for the City of London Corporation, until his retirement three years ago.
“There is always lots of ringing here, whereas there wasn’t so much in my local area,” he explains. “So, when it came to looking for a job, I thought: ‘I know where I am going.’ And that was that.”
His hobby also encouraged him to see the world.
“There are standard methods the world over. If you turned up at a tower in Australia, New Zealand or America, and they said ‘Right, we are going to ring Plain Bob Minor,’ you would be able to join in. I’ve travelled to all those places. When you meet other ringers, you’ve ready-made friends.”
It was during the 1980s that Regin came across the Roll of Honour with the names of some 1077 bell-ringer soldiers who had died as a result of World War I. Compiled by a military chaplain and campanologist, the Revd Cyril Jenkyn, it had been kept in St Paul’s Cathedral, where it remains. Regin asked the then Keeper of the Rolls what else was known about the men. ‘They’re just names, aren’t they?’ was his reply.
Not to Regin. He made it his mission to winkle out the back stories of every ringer by visiting military cemeteries in France, Belgium and Turkey, including Gallipoli, and studying hundreds of war memorials. In the process, he discovered a further 200 fallen ringers who now appear on a second Roll of Honour. And the numbers keep growing.
“Before 1914, ringing was going through a boom time,” he says. “Towers were having bells repaired and brand new rings of bells were being cast. A heck of a lot of ringers went off to fight, however, and so the towers fell silent. At Edington in Wiltshire they had a ring of six bells – but by 1919 six of their eight or nine ringers had been killed.”
As the WWI centenary loomed, Alan decided that each fallen ringer deserved a memorial moment of his own. The hundredth anniversary of every death would be greeted with a peal by present-day ringers in the place where the man had lived. It has proved a mammoth task, but campanologists are clearly up for a challenge.
“Hundreds of ringers across the country have got involved. We’ve had everything from somebody tolling a single bell to full peals. Some towers have no ringers left, in which case we go and ring ourselves or, if there is a local group, make sure that they do it. The Durham and Newcastle Diocesan Association has really gone to town. They arrange ringing at the local tower, but also at Newcastle Cathedral where there is a memorial to all ringers from that area.”
Closer to home, there will soon be a peal for Private Robert William Melville, who lived in Guildford and was killed in France at just 18. With the help of Melville’s nephew, Chris Kippin – also a ringer – Regin has ascertained that Robert was probably taught to ring by his father, a blacksmith. He rang his first and only peal – of Grandsire Triples – at Chiddingfold, on December 26, 1917. Months later he enlisted with the Black Watch (the family had roots in Fife) and was killed in action on September 20, 1918.
Michael Crabtree Press Association Images
35435357
Alan Regin MBE
“We rang a full peal of Cambridge Surprise Major at Holy Trinity Guildford on the morning of Saturday, September 22,” says Alan. “It will took around three hours and 20 minutes.”
Regin announces details of upcoming commemorative peals in The Ringing World, the weekly journal for church bell-ringers since 1911. To date, he estimates, the deaths of 75-80% of those on the Rolls of Honour have been marked – an astonishing feat for which Regin has been recognised with an MBE. Yet he feels that there is more to be done.
“Ringers are getting older and we need new recruits. I suggested the symbolic replacement during this centenary of the 1,400 ringers who died and there is now a recruitment website, Ringing Remembers. You fill in a form and are directed to a local instructor. Several hundred people have signed up. No doubt a few thought: ‘Three minutes and I’ll be a bell-ringer.’ But, of course, it takes commitment. You don’t need to read music, but you have to be relatively physically able, as lots of bells are rung in towers. A little coordination and a sense of rhythm help too.”
On November 11, 100 years on from the Armistice, the bells will ring out in unison from churches and cathedrals across the land. But only with the help of new blood. Why not give it a try? Those bells won’t ring themselves!
