SuffolkGuild of Ringers : Tour of the Towers

28th September, 2024

As part of a fundraising initiative run by The Suffolk Guild of Ringers, Westhorpe was asked to be one of the towers to be visited in a day-long, County-wide journey calling in at thirty-one towers to ring the bells for thirty minutes. This event was advertised nationally and participants came from far and wide.

We were to be visited at 4.30 pm but people starting arriving long before that and had to form an orderly queue within the church to await the specified start time. To our astonishment, eighty-two ringers attended St Margaret’s and included people from Scotland, Devon, Yorkshire and Leicestershire. We were to discover that ‘new bells’ were the draw and that our church was apparently the ‘creme de la creme’ of the day’s event.

It took the best part of an hour for all those waiting to get their turn but they were good-humoured and went off pleased that they had ticked off a ‘new’ Tower.