Frampton villagers hear bells at a service for first time in decades

People living in Frampton, just north of Dorchester, heard the bells of St Mary's Church as they pealed for the first time in decades.

There had not been a regular band of ringers at Frampton for decades and the bells had fallen silent until last summer when an appeal on Facebook by local Gareth Down brought forward a new group of novice campanologists called 'The Frampton Tower'.

Gareth Down, who is now the tower captain, said: “I moved into the village a few years ago and was quite sad when I found out there wasn’t a regular band of ringers.

“I’ve rung on and off since I was a teenager so once we were safely over Covid I decided to see if we could get enough people together to get the bells going again.

“I was really lucky that half a dozen people came forward who were keen to learn and we’ve stuck with it for well over six months now.”

The group is particularly keen to be able to ‘ring for the King’ at the time of the Coronation, but until now had only rung for practice sessions.

Ian Tanner, one of the new ringers, said: “We’ve all really enjoyed learning to ring. We’ve had some great teachers and we’ve really bonded as a group. It was incredibly exciting to ring for real for the first time to call everyone to a service."

However, it hasn’t been all plain sailing for the group.

After a few months of ringing, an inspection of the bells showed that they may need some work, so the group moved to Maiden Newton church for a few months.

A full survey of the Frampton bells was recently carried out which showed that they were safe to ring but would need some work doing if their future was going to be protected for generations to come.

Mr Down continued: “The bells are over 300 years old and some of them are really rare – we have three Lewis Cockey bells, which were all cast in the 17th century, and there are only 11 of those in the whole country. In addition, we have the oldest oak frame in Dorset so we want to do all we can to preserve the bells and the frame they are hung in.

“This work will cost a lot of money, probably over £50,000, so we are about to start a fundraising campaign as well as applying for grants wherever we can.

“But in the meantime, we are going to carry on enjoying learning together and meeting up each week.”