Tag: Burghill

BRF Sponsored Walk & Ringing Day – Thursday 24 September 2026

HDGB members are warmly encouraged to join our sister charity, the Bell Restoration Fund, for its Sponsored Walk & Ringing Day. This is a friendly, sociable event open to all — walkers, ringers, and supporters alike.

What’s happening

Participants will visit and ring at four Herefordshire towers in one day, walking a total of 12.67 miles. You can walk the full route, walk a single leg, ring at one or more towers, or simply come along to encourage the walkers. Sponsorship is optional.

Timetable

Practical notes

  • Bring lunch
  • Wear sensible footwear
  • Dogs on leads
  • If leaving a car at Bodenham, arrange a lift back (finish is at Marden)

Sponsorship

If you’d like to sponsor a walker, please contact sue@peasgreen.co.uk. Gift Aid available for UK taxpayers.

More details

Download the poster.

About the BRF

Since 1976, the Bell Restoration Fund has awarded over £218,000 in grants to bell projects across the diocese. Every mile walked helps support this work.

 

ART Course Report

Susannah from Burghill attended a recent Association of Ringing Teachers M1 course. Here is her report …

As August drifted its way into September and my mind was beginning to fill up with thoughts of algebra and teenagers, and how to make the latter learn the former, I found myself with one last challenge left for the summer holidays: the ART M1 course.

I am a Teacher by trade, and a bellringer by hobby, but I hadn’t really expected to bring these two things together until our tower captain at Burghill proposed that several of us should do an ART course. So, setting aside all thoughts of algebra for the day, I popped my soup into a thermos and headed out to church on Saturday to learn how to teach bellringing.

Our group was made up of a wide range of people – from those of us who have only been ringing a couple of years ourselves, to those who have been ringing and teaching for years or even decades. This definitely made for a very interesting course as the wisdom and advice from the course leaders Paul and Frank were complemented by stories, experiences and techniques from those on the course. Learning alongside such a range of ringers made it very easy to ask lots of questions to really deepen our understanding and the course leaders were great at taking on board what we were asking and explaining a technique in more detail, or talking us through the reasoning behind various choices that the ART scheme has made.

The course combined theory and practical, helping us to really get to grips with what Frank and Paul were recommending, and to realise the aspects of teaching that might be most challenging (such as remembering not to catch the sally if you’ve told the learner to catch it – the muscle memory was not easy to unlearn!)

It was clear by the end of the day that all of us were feeling reassured, equipped, and enthused to go away and teach more people how to ring bells, and we have already started to organise a follow up session between ourselves to help us practice some of the exercises and techniques that we’ve learnt so that we can be even more confident and comfortable when we use them on our new learners.

I expected to get quite a lot out of this course, but I have to say that the day surpassed my expectations, and I am very much looking forward to making the most of my learning and doing my bit to encourage more people to ring, and teach them to do so!