Church bellringing in the Salisbury Diocese

Master’s Message

I must start by congratulating Go Bellistic for their fantastic achievement in the Ringing World National Youth Competition. Ten of our young ringers from across the Guild took part in the 13th competition held in London. Based at St Marys Bow (the famous Bow Bells), they had a fabulous day out touring around 6 City of London churches, culminating in the results presentation at St Pauls Cathedral.

Their competition piece was call changes on the 8 at St Olave, Hart Street, where they came joint 7th out of 13 teams. Sadly Bertie their mascot overslept and missed the train so had to watch the day unfold on What’s App, as I did having gone down with Covid! Three of the team have to retire this year, having had their 18th birthdays so there will be some vacancies on the team next year – please do encourage your young ringers to join the events that Hilary Child organises for them as who knows where it might lead.

The competition days really are the most fabulous days out with opportunities provided that many of us older ringers would give their right arm for! And, on that note Hilary would welcome another adult to help her organise and lead the local young ringers events. So please do get in touch if you think you can help; there must be someone in our Guild of 1600 people who is keen to see young ringers progress!

There are two quite significant things coming up in the next month. One is the LEBRF Open Day in 17th August in the Dorchester Area. These are always great days out and have the added bonus of generating funds for the LEBRF which are then used to support bell restoration projects large and small across our Guild. All details are on the website here: sdgr.org.uk/fundraising-tower-open-day-lebrf – 16 towers culminating in the magnificent Sherborne Abbey, the heaviest 8 in the world, so come along and grab a ring on a word record set of bells after a trip around the beautiful Dorset countryside.

The second thing is the amalgamation of the GDPR and New Learner forms with Membermojo Registration which essentially will streamline and simplify the process of registering with the Guild, and more importantly allow us to gain your consent and store your data all in one place. I can hear people asking why this was not done at the start of Membermojo and there are two reasons, firstly the need to urgently update our GDPR processes became apparent during 2023 and secondly, until the AGM in May we did not know if Membermojo was going to be implemented across the Guild. So from August onwards anyone who registers on Membermojo will have all their consent taken in one place. If however, you have already registered and not completed a separate GDPR form, please do so here: sdgr.org.uk/data-protection-policy. Everyone needs to do this if you wish to receive communications from your Branch, the Guild, and to see your name in the Annual Report. If you choose not to register/complete the GDPR we won’t be able to send you any communication about Guild or Branch activities and your name will not be published under your towers in the Annual Report as we will not have your explicit permission to do so which is required by the regulations.