adven­tures at St Vedast-Alias-Fos­ter Lane, and St James Garlickhythe

Final­ly, after the stress­es of the house move and a bit of time to recov­er, I’m back in the ring­ing cham­ber!  Two of them, actually.

Some­times you have to fol­low your heart.  Very kind­ly, I had been intro­duced to two poten­tial church­es that, to look at a map, seemed to be the most nat­ur­al places for me to ring, once I left behind my beloved St Mary’s, Barnes.  And I think I will turn up at one or both of them, even­tu­al­ly.  But what I think will be my “home” church, I found all on my own.  I’ll explain.

Every evening, after din­ner, John and I (and now Avery, who is thank­ful­ly home for the hol­i­days) take a walk.  It might be to the West along the riv­er, to the blue twin­kling lights and skate­board­ers of South­bank, or to the East past the Globe, toward Bor­ough Mar­ket.  But most often we walk across the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge to St Paul’s, and beyond.  It was this trek that we took one very cold night, about two weeks ago, and as we passed St Paul’s, we heard the sound of bells.  Fol­low­ing the sound, we came upon this love­ly, dig­ni­fied old church, with lights on in the ring­ing cham­ber from which the sounds emanated.

We count­ed six bells and noticed that it was close to 9 p.m., tra­di­tion­al end­ing time for night­time prac­tices, so we blew on our hands and hung around, shiv­er­ing, until final­ly the bells were rung down, the sal­lies stored away, the lights turned off, and the door you can see at ground lev­el opened.

I screwed up my courage and approached the ringers spilling out onto the pave­ment.  “I’m a new neigh­bor, just across the bridge, and a ringer.  Would I be wel­come ring­ing with you?”

“Well, absolute­ly,” a woman said prompt­ly, “here’s the Tow­er Cap­tain; he can give you all the details.”

I was intro­duced to Tom, an intel­lec­tu­al-look­ing gen­tle­man with a twin­kle in his eye and a firm hand­shake.  “Of course, come along next Mon­day if you like.  Tied ring­ing from 6, open from 7.”

St Vedast-Alias-Fos­ter, my new church!

On prac­tice day, I was ter­ri­bly ner­vous all after­noon (“why do I put myself through these things?” I kept ask­ing myself), prepar­ing some­thing for us to eat when I got home, wor­ry­ing over how I should present my skills.  I emailed my great ring­ing friend Michael to express my fear and hes­i­ta­tion, and he of course respond­ed with encour­age­ment and good advice to great­ly under­sell my abil­i­ties!  Final­ly it was time to go.  As instruct­ed, I pulled the lit­tle bell that hung out from the cham­ber, to alert them as to my arrival.

Of course there was noth­ing to wor­ry about.  Well, there was, but it was­n’t my wel­come, which was warm from every­one.  And what a charm­ing ring­ing cham­ber, with six ropes (six dif­fer­ent sallies!).

“Yes, they ARE all dif­fer­ent, but there’s a method to the mad­ness,” a Cana­di­an ringer called Eliz­a­beth assured me.  “You see, each rope forms a pair with its part­ner across the room.”

So the sal­ly that’s large­ly blue, with yel­low stripes, is mir­rored across the cham­ber with a sal­ly that’s large­ly yel­low, with blue stripes.  Of course.  That’s the way with ringers.  Every­thing has a pattern.

Now the name of this church — St Vedast-Alias-Fos­ter — is real­ly mys­ti­fy­ing, but I have tracked down a cer­tain expla­na­tion.  “St Vedast” is appar­ent­ly a cor­rup­tion of a French saint name “Vast,” which can be (and was) pro­nounced “Vaust,” much as a flower “vase” can be pro­nounced “vahs.”  Then the fur­ther cor­rup­tion of the “v” to an “f” led to “Fost,” and an extra syl­la­ble to make it pos­ses­sive, “Fos­t’s,” led to the name “Fos­ter.”  There­upon the lane where the church is locat­ed was named “Fos­ter Lane,” some­time in the 14th century.

The church was then burned down in the Great Fire of Lon­don in Sep­tem­ber 1666, and was rebuilt by Christo­pher Wren’s office, who of course built St Paul’s Cathe­dral.  The poor build­ing was then bombed in the Blitz, and its sup­port­ers resist­ed a sug­ges­tion that it be left as a war memo­r­i­al, just as it was.  So it was rebuilt again, the bell tow­er being the only bit that sur­vived all the dis­as­ters.  This hap­pens more often than you would think — when my old St Mary’s was burned by an arson­ist in the 1970s, the bell tow­er survived.

So we rang!  Their six bells are reput­ed to be the finest in the City of Lon­don, and cer­tain­ly they are beau­ti­ful.  I rang the 3, the 4, and the 5, get­ting a good feel­ing for the the expe­ri­ence.  When I took a break and a sip of water, sit­ting on a bench under the win­dow, this was my view.

Absolute­ly magical.

Every­one was very friend­ly and sup­port­ive.  I need­ed the sup­port, as this band ring call changes in a very mys­te­ri­ous and chal­leng­ing way.  Bear with me: the call changes I’m used to are called by what  is described as “bell num­bers.”  That is, if you’re stand­ing hold­ing the rope of the third bell in the ring, you are “ring­ing the 3,” fol­low­ing the 2 in what are called “rounds,” the pri­ma­ry way of ring­ing, the high­est note down to the low­est note.  When “call changes” begin, then, the con­duc­tor says, “3 to 4,” which means you are told to “change,” that is, to ring after the 4 instead of the 2.  But you are still “the 3.”

Not at St Vedast!  Tom has devised a fiendish method of ring­ing changes by POSI­TION.  So you start out as “the 3,” and instead of call­ing “3 to 4,” he calls “third to fourth,” which means the bell ring­ing in the third posi­tion begins ring­ing in the fourth posi­tion, and is there­after referred to as “fourth,” until anoth­er change is called.

Dev­il­ish!  What this means is that you don’t just pay atten­tion to where you are, and maybe where the bell you’re ring­ing after is, you pay atten­tion to EVERY­ONE.  You have to know the entire pat­terns of where every­one has been called.  It was among the most chal­leng­ing things I’ve ever done.  The tru­ly stun­ning thing is that when­ev­er I ring at St Vedast, and changes are called, it will be to this method.  I managed!

I brave­ly turned up the fol­low­ing Sun­day, yes­ter­day, to ring for Sun­day ser­vices, for the first time since we moved house.  It is a glo­ri­ous place, St Vedast.

 This inte­ri­or is known as an “aca­d­e­m­ic” style, as the pews are organ­ised on the sides of the church with a cen­tral aisle, in the man­ner of school chapels.

We were only four at first, and so rang very sim­ply, then at the very last minute a love­ly young cou­ple turned up and we were able to ring all six bells, quite well!  I was aston­ished at how few ringers there were to ring for ser­vices, and asked Tom what sort of size the con­gre­ga­tion was.  “Well, not too bad, con­sid­er­ing there are only five legal res­i­dents of the parish.”  What?  Yes, that’s what hap­pens when the life of a neigh­bor­hood spans 700 years, evolv­ing from a place where peo­ple build hous­es and raise their chil­dren and ring bells and go to church, into a place where giant glass high-rise build­ings house office work­ers who go home at the end of the day.  Five res­i­dents.  Amaz­ing, when I think of the hun­dreds that fill St Mary’s, Barnes, every Sun­day.  It makes it all the more sweet to “let the bells give tongue,” on a chilly Decem­ber Sun­day morn­ing.  And the organ­ist and soloist brave­ly prac­ticed for the very few who would hear them.

After we rang down, we repaired, in a very civilised tra­di­tion, to a local cafe for a con­vivial cof­fee in the time between St Vedast’s ser­vice and the next one at St James Gar­lick­hythe.

I know, what a name; all my friends have been jok­ing that I chose it for the gar­lic.  Do you remem­ber sev­er­al years ago when the Queen’s Jubilee came along?  Eight new shiny bells were cast in her hon­our and were installed on a gold­en barge, to be rung as they float­ed along the Thames.  And after­ward, they were deliv­ered to St James Gar­lick­hythe where all Lon­don ringers were invit­ed to come and pull a rope, so I did!  What a beau­ti­ful place.

What a fun­ny urban echo of my pre­vi­ous Sun­day tra­di­tion of rac­ing by car across the riv­er to Chiswick to ring for our sec­ond ser­vice — this time we emerged from St Vedast into the shad­ow of St Paul’s, drank our socia­ble cof­fee, get­ting to know each oth­er, then walked through the desert­ed City streets to Gar­lick­hythe, which does indeed mean the “hill where gar­lic was sold,” in the days of the deliv­er­ies to count­less repos­i­to­ries along the Thames.

I had popped along to the Gar­lick­hythe prac­tice on Thurs­day night, with the great Dick­on Love in charge.  He could­n’t be more charm­ing and unas­sum­ing, for all his fame.

He has become well-known in Lon­don for iden­ti­fy­ing church­es that need bells, fundrais­ing for those bells, and installing them in the ancient tow­ers.  Gar­lick­hythe is just the most recent recip­i­ent of his bril­liance, and as a result, just look at one of the bells that live there now, after their adven­ture on the barge.

He and his band were very wel­com­ing to me.  In par­tic­u­lar, a chap called Mark stood behind me in a bit of Plain Bob.  “I’ve been doing this for 47 years, so I’ll just give you a bit of support.”

What love­ly Jubilee-red sallies.

With great humor, Dick­on asked me how com­fort­able I was on Plain Bob.  “Well, not too bad, from the four,” I said cau­tious­ly.  “Right, then, take the two.”  Ringers always make you push your bound­aries!  I sur­vived, then took a break to appre­ci­ate the hol­i­day cheer in the tower.

Sun­day morn­ing was just as pleas­ant, ring­ing more of Tom’s dia­bol­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing “posi­tion changes.”  It’s fun­ny — if you just sus­pend your con­fu­sion, and look around the tow­er, the ropes begin to speak to you.  “Ring after me,” they say.  If you lis­ten, you can find your place.  And the method forces you to pay atten­tion to absolute­ly every­thing that’s going on around you, rather than com­fort­ably rest­ing in your own lit­tle posi­tion.  I gave a lit­tle time to the beau­ti­ful peal board that cel­e­brates both the peal on the Jubilee Barge, and the first peal in the Tower.

And so my ring­ing life con­tin­ues.  As is always true in the world of bells, teach­ers are gen­er­ous, fel­low ringers are sup­port­ive and friend­ly, church­es are stun­ning pieces of Eng­lish his­to­ry, and the bells them­selves intim­i­dat­ing, chal­leng­ing new friends.  Whether it’s in a leafy vil­lage or an urban val­ley of stone, ring­ing is a nev­er-end­ing adventure.