Article originally published in Ringing World (11 February 2023)
The ‘Ring for the King’ recruitment and ringing initiative is well underway at All Saints, Kingston upon Thames. This is particularly pertinent given the Church was the site for the crowning of several Saxon Kings, especially King Aethelstan in 925 to whom the regional leaders swore allegiance creating what we now know as England in 927.
Penny Lane Entertainment Ltd have been commissioned by ITV’s ‘Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh’ – a programme broadcast on Sunday mornings (between 9.30 and 11.30) – to make up to four ringing features in support of the ‘Ring for the King’ initiative. With the historical connection they were keen to include Kingston. It was agreed to meet on Monday 16 January to undertake around 6 hours of filming to produce footage for a 3 minute segment in the programme to be broadcast. The team asked if the ringers would include some young ringers until it was pointed out that weekdays are school days! As such they had to make do with a more mature set of ringers. As many of the Kingston ringers are still in full-time employment and with the funeral of the Association’s former President, Eric Godfrey, taking place elsewhere on that day resulting in the absence of Paul and Kate Flavell, it was necessary to call in some help from other towers and I am grateful to all those who came to help on the day.
In addition to filming the ringing and interviewing some of the ringers they added footage of the Vicar (Revd Joe Moffatt) and Heritage Officer (Pippa Heasman) discussing the role of All Saints Church to the town both in a historical and present day context. The ringing was kept straight forward with lots of rounds on the complete ring of 12 bells interspersed with Stedman Caters. Alan Titchmarsh is himself a ringer but was not present on the day so we were unable to see him ring. The camera team had seen ringing at a previous location but thought the Kingston belfry an ideal location given the space and large model bell in the middle of the rope circle. They had not filmed seeing the bells turning over when being rung together however, so were fascinated and keen to film that sequence with shots of the ringing itself in the belfry. I was also given the task of being mic’d-up to explained change ringing to the camera while taking part in a course of Stedman Caters – multi-tasking not normally required when ringing at Kingston!
We have now been informed the item is to be broadcast in the programme scheduled for Sunday 12 February (Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh from 9.30am on ITV). Most of us will of course be ringing ourselves at that time but you should be able to view on catch up afterwards).
Further publicity about ‘Ring for the King’ can be found on the Surrey Bellringers website (The Surrey Association of church bell ringers (surreybellringers.org.uk) as well as the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers website (CCCBR).
Chris Ridley