A small but beautiful Grade 1- Listed parish church on the edge of Cambridge has this weekend produced a new set of bell-sounds to ring out across the Fen Edge. Over £70,00 needed to be raised to have two new bells cast, one to honour the King’s Coronation last year, one to celebrate the Landbeach Community itself. Its 500 year-old tenor bell, meanwhile, had a refit: the result is a perfectly-tuned peal of six bells which increases the sound-pattern range from 24 sequences to 720!
Church and community felt honoured that Deputy Lords Lieutenant Edward Beckett, Baron Grimthorpe, and Christopher Walkinshaw, were able to attend the two commemorative events of the weekend, as well as David Way, High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire. Amongst other civic dignitaries attending was Professor Christopher Kelly, Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge; the college has had the patronage of All Saints’ Landbeach, since the 1350s, and a famous former Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, was Rector there in Tudor times.
Tower Captain Barbara Le Gallez feels that the Beach Bellringers of Landbeach and Waterbeach owe much to the enthusiasm of former generations in handing on the ‘Intangible Heritage’ [UNESCO term] of Method Ringing tower and hand-bells in mathematical sequences. The new team and bells welcome new ringers! Please contact Barbara on [email protected] if you are interested.
Acting Bishop of Ely, the Rt Revd Dr Dagmar Winter, ceremonially accepted the bell-ropes from Andrew Nicholson (whose foundry in Bridport was responsible for the new engineering). Bishop Dagmar then dedicated and blessed the bells as a symbol of open welcome to all who wish to join the life of church and community at Landbeach – and the new peri-urban developments beyond it. Like a flourishing grapevine, she hoped that sounds and service would branch out to the community.
Unique and new sounds were heard within the church itself in a composition, ‘Landbeach Bells’ by Philip Mead: a chorale by the visiting St Augustine’s Singers cued an additional accompaniment by the newly-augmented peal of six bells, in harmony! The sound was relayed, with clarity, into the building by AVxpert’s special technology.
The Coronation and Community bells were cast by the Eijsbouts Royal Foundry at Asten in the Netherlands, so made a double journey, firstly to Bridport, Dorset, for fine-tuning with the original Tenor bells which was at Nicholson Engineering for maintenance and a new headstock. Although this bell is dated at around 1520 it is possible that its origin may have been in Norfolk, two centuries earlier. Professional advice has been needed in order to install new ringing-mechanisms in the church tower: Volunteers willing to rig metal frames, thread ropes and shift half-tons of bronze have nevertheless been essential to the project.
Whilst there is debate as to whether Bell-ringing is an Art, a Sport or a Technology, without doubt, everyone in Landbeach agrees that the bells old and new affirm community spirit and welcome! As evidence of that, the church itself provides a Warm Hub, Community Cupboard and Wednesday lunch-club as well space and time for quiet spiritual practice during the week.
What isn’t certain is what the sometimes-resident bats think about all of this, or the swifts who tend to return to their designated nesting-boxes in the church tower. Up until now, the wildlife have always been welcome in church and churchyard – happily unaffected by the resonant bells which ring out again across the Fen Edge. Everyone hopes that the birds, like the bells, will continue to thrive for generations to come.