Our year has been busy with the usual activities of service ringing every Sunday morning, Friday quarter peals and practices, Saturday practices, ringing for weddings and memorial services as well as our Summer Tour and Winter Outing.
We continued to fundraise for our training facilities and are hugely grateful to the congregation and the wider community for the support they have shown. The four refurbished laptops are in frequent use and the second dumb/practice bell will be put to use once we are in a position to apply for a Faculty to fix both permanently in the clock room. Other smaller items have simplified the setup for learners. We still have £8,700 in our account. However, we expect to need a further £5,000 to install full sound control in the tower which would enable us to shut off the sound of the bells travelling out through the tower louvres by means of a single lever, rather than having to clamber under the bells to silence them before and after each practice, which is a tricky and time consuming process.
The extra time and effort put into our training has resulted in huge progress from quite a number of new and improving ringers during the year. We also helped with a training programme for new ringers at All Saints Fulham and follow-up sessions were held in Barnes on clamped bells most weekdays throughout August from 7.30 am to 9.00 am, a time which suited both trainers and learners alike, with essential coffee and croissants half-way through! These learners now attend practices at both churches and frequently make up numbers for our own service ringing. 
We continue our involvement with the Association of Ringing Teachers (ART), and nine certificates have been presented to learners during the year for reaching higher proficiency levels.
We were very proud that two of our young ringers, Isabelle and Dominic Johnson, were selected this year for the Surrey Association’s ‘Surrey Strikers’ band in the Ringing World National Youth Contest for under 19s. Three of us went to Liverpool for the day to support the team along with their trainers and families.
We were delighted to welcome our new Rector and marked the occasion with a quarter peal on Friday 26 July.
External ringing activities included a one-day Winter Outing in January to churches around Harefield, then our Summer Trip with 5 days of very enjoyable ringing in and around Hereford.
St Mary’s is always a sought-after location for ringing courses and training. We hosted a group for Developing Handling Skills in March and then a Teachers Conference in November, both for the Surrey Association.
Our schedule of quarter peals along with the Friday practices provide challenges for some of the more experienced ringers in the area and are a wonderful opportunity for members of our own band to progress.
Ringers come from quite a wide area for training on Saturday mornings and the knowledge and training skills required can vary considerably. We are grateful for the assistance of experienced ringers from other towers in the area.
This year ringers from our main band with support of two choir members rang carols on our handbells outside M&S for the BCA Christmas Festival, raising £148 for Spinal Research. They rang again for the residents of Viera Gray and Walsingham Lodge in mid-December with the choir and clergy from the three Barnes churches.
In February, it was an honour to be invited by FiSH to speak at Barnes Green Day Centre in one of their regular Tuesday slots, on ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’. Over 60 people attended the talk which covered the history of the bells, explained the mechanism of ringing a bell full-circle and lots more. In researching this, it was extraordinary to realise that for more than 50 years in the early part of the last century we did not have many, if any, ringers of our own, and that the bells were probably only ever rung by visitors or by someone using the 1898 Ellacombe chiming apparatus!
I thank our own tower members who are always so willing to give their support to the group and the wider St Mary’s community in so many different ways and who make our ringing activities interesting, rewarding and enjoyable.
Trisha Hawkins, [email protected]
Officers: Trisha Hawkins (Captain), Jill Wigney (Treasurer/Secretary) and Andrew Howard-Smith (Steeple Keeper) & 20 other regular ringers.