“I would like to nominate Amanda Marchant and the Lambourn Branch Tower for the Marshall Shield.
The team led by Amanda have raised approximately £14000 in less than a year (this includes grants) to enable them to refurbish the ringing chamber and carry out essential maintenance on the bells. Work on the ringing chamber has been started and work on the bells will start I believe early next year.
Amanda is a very enthusiastic ringer and promotes the band whenever & where ever she can. She keeps the tower clean, enhances the walls with poster displays & generally makes the tower welcoming.
The band is a very friendly one and the members never stop trying. They always muster enough people to ring for Sunday service and special occasions.
Visitors are always made welcome and it has been known for visiting bands to be supplied with tea & cake.
I can’t really praise them enough, they are a lovely band and what they lack in skill (all being comparatively new to ringing) they make up with enthusiasm and determination.
Maureen”

“A few years ago, Beenham and Yattendon towers decided to join together for practices; attendance at both towers had seen a dip, and Yattendon, sharing ringers with the currently unringable Hampstead Norreys, were open to raising their standard of ringing.
At the beginning of 2018, an article in the respective village newsletters about Ringing for Peace resulted in a number of new ringers coming forward, and there are now 6 new ringers between the two towers.
Priority has been given to teaching these new recruits, and the experienced ringers helped and encouraged them. Practices are social, friendly and fun. All the novices achieved their aim of ringing to commemorate the anniversary of the end of the First World War, and are now regularly ringing for services and weddings.
In 2019 quarter peal week, 2 of the newer ringers rang their first quarter peals, and in April there was a joint tower outing to 5 Downland towers. The most heard response was “That was great fun, can we do that again?” !
It is thanks to our new ringers for their staying power and sense of humour that they have contributed to the revitalisation of these towers, which will also extend to Hampstead Norreys once its bell restoration is complete. But the greatest contribution has been from Marcus Allum, who has with patience and skill handled evenings of up to 9 learners at a time. Marcus has through the years
taught many people to ring, but this has been his greatest challenge; new and experienced ringers thank him for his constant help and encouragement.”

“I would like to nominate John and Sheila Craig from Hampstead Norreys for the Richard Marshall shield. These are my reasons:
As you are probably aware the Hampstead bells became unringable some 5 years ago and sadly what was left of the band had little knowledge or enthusiasm to enter into a full re-hanging programme. The PCC asked the Craigs (who have previously run a number of successful fundraising and restoration project for the village) if they would be willing to undertake a feasibility study to see if this was something they could do. Neither of them knew anything about bells other than Sheila’s hand bell ringing. They have never attempted to ring a bell nor are likely to! Sheila’s experience and skill as a fundraiser is extraordinary. They very quickly put a fundraising project together and in a very short time raised the £70k required; this was possibly the fastest that a project to re-hang a set of bells has been completed. This included 100% of the amount they had requested from the Heritage Lottery – apparently a rare event.
John has project-managed from start to finish. He led the faculty application and needless to say spent many, many hours in discussions with the Oxford DOC. This was a very difficult and stressful time, but eventually he managed to obtain the vital piece of paper and even succeeded in getting permission to tune 5 of the bells.
Not that this was to be the end of his problems as Covid struck meaning that the planned village involvement had to come to an end before the project even started. Taylor’s intimated that if we did some preparatory work during Lockdown, they would be able to move Hampstead to the front of the queue. John realised this was an opportunity, and with Tessa’s assistance, I managed to get the bells into a fit state for Taylor’s to be able to remove them as soon as they were able to resume work.
No sooner had the bells been removed from the tower than active Death-watch Beetle was discovered meaning that the frame was very quickly turning to dust. This meant that John had to quickly find experts who could treat the frame and liaise with Taylors to repair a sadly decaying frame before the bells returned.
John and Sheila also undertook the opening of the church so that the bells could be viewed before and after the bells’ trip to Loughborough. All this was done efficiently and Covid-safe.
In addition, during the project John had to undergo a knee replacement operation, meaning that lots of the organising took place remotely.
Without doubt, without the Craigs’ involvement it wouldn’t be possible for the Hampstead bells to ring out again this Christmas and I suspect that it would have been many more years before they could be rung – if ever“.

“I would like to nominate Maureen Velvick of East Garston Tower for the Marshall Shield.
Maureen led a phenomenal fundraising campaign to raise around £50k in two years in order to have the East Garston bells restored. Her passion, enthusiasm and drive captured the village community and wider ringing circles to organise and/or support a range of fundraising events including a lottery, bric a brac sales, Christmas fayres, sponsored walk, paella lunches, plant sales, metal detecting, sales of covid face masks, and much more. 
Maureen organised volunteers from within the branch and local community to help with manual labour and transportation of the bells in order to save thousands of pounds on the overall cost of the project. The tower was grateful to receive both £5k match funding from the Greenham Trust and a £6.4k grant from the ODG. 
Maureen’s vision was for the ‘challenging’ bells of East Garston to be made easier to ring so that we could invite local ringers to join us and recruit new ones to the band. Maureen’s enthusiasm remains as strong as ever, as she helps teach new ringers and supports and promotes ‘Lambourn Valley’ ringing in general. 
I am sure Maureen would want to thank everyone that contributed in any way at all to making this project a success, and the Lambourn ringers in particular for their help, support and guidance during the project. East Garston tower welcomes all ringers to come and ring the beautifully restored bells”

“In January this year we introduced 5 new members to the Guild from the 2 towers.

They had all been coming to practices for over a year. Some ringing at both practices each week.

The existing ringers from both Towers and Howard from Beedon have been involved in getting all these ringers to the point where they can ring plain hunt on 5 or 6 bells. This means that we have not been method ringing very much. We are now at a point where the learners should move on to ringing methods. Some learners are still plain hunting by knowing the bell to follow but we will get them counting their places soon. The new Chieveley ringers now help with ringing for services and weddings.

One of the new Peasemore ringers has introduced a neighbour who has only been to practice once so far. She appeared to pick up ringing each stroke very quickly. Hopefully she will continue to come to practices.

Hopefully we will be able to progress into method ringing as once I mix the bells up in called changes I have trouble getting them back to rounds. This is not helped by the loudness of the Chieveley or hearing aids being on or off to ring.”