[Bell Historians] Lamberhurst Peal 1936

[Hazel Basford]

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Firstly, I am grateful to those who looked up this peal and let me have the
details (despite my incorrect subject line!!)

It is apparently not clear from the RW if this peal was credited to any
association. The reason for it not being credited to the KCACR was that
Albert Relfe had fallen out with the Association and the Lamberhurst band
resigned from the KCACR with effect from 31st December 1933. The root of
the trouble seems to have been the recognition of the record peal of 26
spliced surprise minor rung on 15th May 1930 (KCACR Peal No 3567) and a peal
of Alliance and Little Minor rung on 26th November 1932 (KCACR Peal No
3939). Both were printed in the Kent Reports but the compositions were
omitted initially and printed in later reports. The composition for Peal No
3567 was printed in 1933 Report and Peal No 3939 in the 1934 Report.

There is some contemporary correspondence from Albert Relfe to Fred
Mitchell, the General Secretary, in the KCACR archives, but unfortunately
the other side of the correspondence is not there, so it is difficult to
understand the whole story.

It may be that some of the methods rung were not officially recognised by
the CC Methods Committee, although if not, why were the peals recognised at
all? In a letter dated 18th March 1933 Albert Relfe writes "I am sending
figures of peals asked for. I am also enclosing the two methods, Hever and
Kilndown Alliance as they are not in the new Minor book. They were sent to
the Ringing World but have not been published. I am surprised that no one
has doubted the truth of the peal, as six of the 720s were rung contrary to
the rules given by the Methods Committee in the new book." These methods
were in Peal No 3939.

In a letter dated 23rd June 1933, he writes, "The 1933 Report to hand. I
see you have at last published the figures of the 26 surprise methods peal,
but you have not, as promised on your card of 14/3/33 (probably the
correspondence the previous letter was replying to) put the figures of the
Alliance and Little peal in. This peal not only includes 13 methods which
have not been rung in a peal before, two of them are methods which the
Methods Committee of the CC omitted from the collection, but were rung to
compositions hitherto believed to be impossible. In your Report you say
"Three additional first performances have been added to the list." Two of
them, rung entirely by non-resident and unattached members have the figures
published, but those rung by a band of Sunday service ringers are not. Does
that give resident members encouragement to progress?"

Clearly the issue was far more than the recognition of the methods and
composition, although the root of it was the pushing of accepted boundaries.
Albert and his band of Sunday service ringers felt that the Association
discriminated against them personally.

In his second letter Albert referred to an editorial in "today's Ringing
World" on the subject of composition. If someone could kindly look this up,
it might throw a bit more light on to the matter.

KCACR General Committee minutes and Tonbridge District minutes of the time
fail to mention anything about the dispute.

Hazel Basford
Kent County Association of Change Ringers
Hon. Librarian
hazel at b...
KCACR website
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/fwcml/homepage.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: Willbutler at a...
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] Lamberhurst Peal 1936


The Ringing World for October 12, 1934 contains this peal on page 645,
thus:

LAMBERHURST, KENT
On Saturday, October 6, 1934, in Two Hours and Fifty-One Minutes,
AT THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY,
A PEAL OFSPLICED MORLAND ALLIANCE AND BASTOW LITTLE
COURT, 5040 CHANGES;
*BASIL SANDS .... .... .... Treble ALBERT RELFE .... ....
.... 4
WALTER MARSHALL ... ... ...2 JAMES WAGHORN, JUN, .... .... 5
ANDREW MARSHALL ... ... ...3 JAMES BASSETT ... ... ... Tenor
Composed by A. G. DRIVER Conducted by A. RELFE


* First peal. Rung in honour of the wedding of Mr J. C. Morland, of
Court Lodge, and Miss G. L. Bastow, of Kensington. Also to celebrate the
completion of 25 years' service ringing together at the church by the
ringers of 2, 3 and 4. First time the above methods have been rung to a
peal.

As may be seen, no association is mentioned. Miss Bastow's first initial
may have been a C: unfortunately my copy of the Ringing World has an ink
blob at that point!

William Butler
Thatcham, Berks
willbutler at a...



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