Chester Diocesan Guild — St. Thomas' Stockton Heath

8th December 2016 – 30th June 2017

The work on our bells has finally been completed and on Thursday 24th November 2016 we carried out a ten-bell test - all very exciting and successful and thankfully no bits dropped off (!) so we have been officially cleared to ring. The band and our regular trainers and helpers from local towers will ring for practice nights only throughout December, commencing Sunday morning service ringing from 15th January 2017. In order to allow our new ringers to gel as a band we have decided to hold CLOSED practice nights for at least the first six months. This is because we have been learning at various towers in the branch, and only latterly having a joint practice night once a month. We feel it is very important to give a lot of time to our new band and while we look forward to welcoming visitors in the future, we are going to protect our practice time as we become accustomed to our own bells and to ringing as a team. However, we know that there may be ringers who would like to visit and ring our bells, so from February 2017 we will be offering this option. One Saturday afternoon a month will be set aside for visiting bands and if you would like to make an initial enquiry please use the contact form on our website, http://www.stthomas-stocktonheath.org.uk/our-contact-details/contact-form.php scrolling down to select ’Bell Ringing Enquiry’ from the drop-down Who do you want to contact? field. We still have a lot of funds to raise because the project overspent, so we will be charging a fee of £10 per ringer to help towards the cost of our new bells. We are very grateful for the help of all the ringers who have enabled us to get this far and we are looking forward to being part of the bell ringing community.