If you live in the village you will have heard us ringing for services on Sunday mornings or practising on Wednesday evenings. We hope this page will arouse your curiosity. Please feel free to visit us and perhaps try your hand at our ancient art.

If you are a ringer we look forward to meeting you. Sandridge has a ring of six bells in Bflat with a tenor of 6-3-19.

Have you rung in the past and are considering starting again? Please come and say hello.

Wednesday is practice night, from 7.30 to 9pm. We ring every Sunday between 9.20 and 9.55am

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN TO RING CHURCH BELLS?

Retirement moves, university and advancing years are taking their toll in Sandridge belfry. Over the last three years we have lost almost half of our regular ringers, and we are keen to find recruits to learn. We are still managing to ring for morning services, even if at times with only five ringers instead of the six needed for all the bells, but we need to reverse the trend and increase the size of the group again.

We are looking for reasonably able-bodied volunteers to learn, aged from 10 to 70 (or even older). It’s a good way to keep fit and mentally agile, meet new people, and help Sandridge church. You can learn bellringing for a DUKE OF EDINBURGH AWARD, or simply to gain a fascinating and useful skill – ringers are usually hospitable, and once you’ve mastered the basics, you will find a welcome anywhere around the world where there are bells. Two of our ringers are recent recruits, and you can read below how one of them got on.

If you would like to learn, or know someone who might be interested in coming along to find out more on a Wednesday night, please telephone either ringing master Vivian Nutton at: 01727 – 831623, or our secretary, Peter Martin-Flaven: at 01727-835536.

Richard started learning in spring 2007, and by the summer was ready to ring at his first wedding. Looking back he wrote :

After one fairly disastrous attempt at ring church bells, many miles away and in my youth, it was with no small sense of trepidation that I decided the time was ripe to give it another go. However, I needn’t have worried – Vivian was careful to ensure that both the bell and I emerged from the experience in one piece!
To begin with, I received individual teaching from Vivian and Geoff before the main practice began and the other ringers arrived. I steadily got to grips with handling the bell safely, gradually taking charge of first the back-stroke (the pull from the end of the rope) and then the hand-stroke (the pull from the sally- the coloured woolly bit). With time and practice, I was able to ring the bell on my own and stop it when I wanted – most of the time, at least.
The rest of the ringers were friendly and encouraging, offering helpful advice on how I could improve my technique as I started to ring rounds with the other bells. I began learning how to control the speed of the bell to ring call-changes – a style of ringing where the sequence is altered from ringing down the scale according to the bells that the conductor instructs to swap places.
I’ve sat in awe watching as the other ringers have rung more complex methods, all of the time listening to the bells and watching the ropes, wondering how they remember such complicated sequences whilst I’m still at the stage of ringing where I need the odd reminder to keep breathing!
I guess that what I’ve learnt so far is that bell ringing is something that you never stop learning, and that as I enjoy my twice weekly mental and physical work-out, it is reassuring to see that even the most competent ringer makes the occasional mistake and so I know there is some hope for me yet!



Richard now regularly rings the tenor for quarter peals rung to mark special celebrations.

Another recent learner, Dominic, was one of the winning Hertfordshire team in a National Youth Striking Competition.