The Guild’s Bell Restoration Fund is named after its first benefactor – but who was he?
Frank Llewellyn Edwards was born in 1873 at Kington Magna, a village not far from Gillingham and was educated at Bath College, New College Oxford and Ridley Hall Cambridge. After teaching for 2 years in Switzerland he returned home and, in 1902, was ordained in Liverpool Cathedral to serve as precentor at St. Paul’s Princes Park. Later he held chaplaincies in Spain and Cyprus.
In 1908 he was inducted as Rector of Kington Magna where he remained until retirement in 1956. There he saw the bells augmented to five, introduced handbell ringing at festivals and taught the village children to sing in seven languages. In 1913 the Guild elected him Secretary and Treasurer, a post he held for thirty-seven years. To know that he was at the helm was to be quite confident of sound progress and of the safeguarding of all the members’ interests, wrote C.C. Cox. Two years earlier he had been elected a member of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers and was later made a Life Member of it, a rare honour. He was convener of the Literature and Press Committee of that body for many years.
A much travelled man, no meeting seemed too distant for him to attend. One member recalls meeting him in Newcastle sitting in the smoke room of the Turk’s Head Hotel, smoking his pipe with gusto and dipping into a jar of ale.
Edwards died on Christmas Eve 1956. Half-muffled ringing took place at Kington Magna. A board commemorating his memory was dedicated at a special gathering on May 9th 1959 when local ringers rang for the service and handbells were rung at the graveside.
Taken from A Century of Changes – Salisbury Diocesan Guild of Ringers 1882 – 1982, Roger Keeley.
