Plain Bob Major at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

An excerpt of a quarter Peal of Plain Bob Major rung at Stoke Poges on Monday, 6th May 2024.
St Giles, Stoke Poges, has a set of eight bells which are bright and musical. The back six bells were cast in 1912 by Gillett and Johnston, followed by the front two in 1937. They are a bit hard to ring and strike well and are quite oddstruck. But overall, it is a good set of eight bells.
The origins of the church are Anglo-Saxon and Norman. The tower dates from the 13th century. The adjacent Hastings Chapel was constructed in 1558 by Edward Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings of Loughborough, owner of the manor of Stoke Poges, who also undertook a substantial enlargement of the neighboring manor house.
St Giles comprises a "battlemented" tower, a nave, a chancel, and the Hastings Chapel. The church is built mainly of flint and chalk stone, with tiled roofs. The exception is the Hastings Chapel, which is constructed of red brick. The style of the chapel is later than the Gothic of the church; Simon Jenkins, the writer and former chairman of the National Trust, describes it as "Tudor." The church has extensions to either side, a vestry of the early 20th century, and an entrance and vestibule installed in the Victorian period to provide private access to the church for the owners of the adjacent manor house. Elizabeth Williamson, in the 2003 revised edition, Buckinghamshire*, of the *Pevsner Buildings of England series, considered the Victorian porch an "excrescence."
During the Victorian era, a restoration was carried out by George Edmund Street. Jenkins, in his volume *England's Thousand Best Churches*, thought that the exterior was treated more sympathetically than the interior. Of the latter, he describes the removal of the plasterwork in the nave, together with the replacement of the Norman chancel arch and the opening up of the hammerbeam roof, as giving the church the appearance of "a barn."
St Giles remains an active parish church in the Church of England, administered as part of the Diocese of Oxford. The churchyard has been used as a filming location. In the opening sequence of the James Bond movie *For Your Eyes Only*, Bond enters the churchyard through the lychgate to pay his respects at the grave of his wife, Teresa. The churchyard also features in Judy Garland's final film, *I Could Go On Singing*.
Adjacent to the church are the Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens, founded in 1935 by Sir Noel Mobbs to ensure "the maintenance in perpetuity of the peace, quietness, and beauty of the ancient church and churchyard." The gardens were landscaped by Edward White and contain a number of private plots for the interment of ashes, within a larger, Grade I listed park. The ashes of the film director Alexander Korda and the broadcaster Kenneth Horne, among others, are interred in the garden.
St Giles is a Grade I listed building. Gray's tomb is designated Grade II. The Gray Monument (adjacent to St Giles' church and owned by the National Trust) is listed at Grade II*. The lychgate is by John Oldrid Scott and is a Grade II listed structure. The churchyard also contains war graves of six British armed services personnel, four of World War I and two of World War II.
Tenor 13-2-23 in F#
dove.cccbr.org.uk/tower/11988
bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.ph...

[@AllolKoyot0109]

Ei, isso é muito legal. Nunca imaginei encontrar um canal assim.

[@mrunixman1579]

I rung there before, these are lovely bells. The old Tower captain who is now dead hated bob triples being rung here so ringing such method here is probley cursed.

[@RingerThomas]

I'll organize PB7 there next time 😊