Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village Read online

  Bellringing is one of the most claiming activities imaginable. The magnificent noise and belfry drill took John Bunyan over completely and his description of his efforts to abandon the obsession has the desperation of a man longing for drink or sex:

  Now you must know that before this, I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it, yet my mind hankered. Wherefore I should go to the steeple house and look on though I durst not ring. But I thought this did not become religion either, yet I forced myself and would look on still. But quickly after I began to think, how if one of the bells should fall? Then I chose to stand under a main beam that lay overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking there I might stand sure. But then I should think again, should the bell fall with a swing it might first hit the wall and then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough for if a bell should fall then I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding.

  So after this, I would yet go to see them ring but would not go further than the steeple door, but then it came into my head, how if the steeple itself should fall? and this thought, it may fall for ought I know, when I stood and looked on did continually so shake my mind that I durst not stand at the steeple door any longer, but was forced to flee for fear the steeple should fall on my head. Another thing was my dancing . . .

  The modern passion for change-ringing began in the seventeenth century with the publication of Fabian Stedman’s Tintinnalogia in 1668. But half a century before this someone had carved on the tower door-post of Buxhall church the following cipher:

  12345

  21345

  23145

  23415

  23451

  2 . .

  Buxhall is only seventeen miles from Akenfield, home of one of England’s greatest tower captains, Robert Palgrave. A tall, handsome man, he has carried the change-ringing virus to Australia, New Zealand, the United States and to Europe, but with little hope of it raging with anything like the fervour it possesses in Suffolk.

  * * *

  During the war, in 1916, the parson here had two daughters who did a bit of ringing. I once saw them what they call “raise the bell,” that is bring it full circle. So one day I went into the church and climbed the belfry, wound a sack round the clapper, went downstairs—and pulled! To my amazement I got the bell up, so then I started practising. That is how I first came to ring. I then brought other boys to the tower and taught them how to do it, and then one day we all walked to Burgh and rang the six bells there. After this we hurried off to Hasketon and rang the bells there—we couldn’t stop. A ringer is first attracted by the sound of the bells, then he comes to see how it is done and something quite different gets a hold of him. Some people say it is the science of the thing.

  What a ringer needs most is not strength but the ability to keep time. Everybody must be dead-on with their pulls. Nobody must be uneven. You must bring these two things together in your mind and let them rest there for ever—bells and time, bells and time. When I first started the young men were so keen to ring that they would be lucky to get five minutes’ practice each—so many of them wanted to have a go. We would think nothing of walking six or more miles just to have a five-minute practice ring in a good tower. And I have walked between twenty and thirty miles in a day to ring a peal of 5,000 changes. All the ringers were great walkers and you would meet them in bands strolling across Suffolk from tower to tower. Many of the old ringers couldn’t read or write, yet they turned out to be really famous bell-composers and conductors. They could get hundreds of rows of figures into their heads and put them all into practice when they reached the belfry. They could set all the bells ringing wherever they went and bring them all back to 1–2–3 4–5–6–7–8.

  The bells tolled for death when I was a boy. It was three times three for a man and three times two for a woman. People would look up and say, “Hullo, a death?” Then the years of the dead person’s age would be tolled and if the bell went on speaking, “seventy-one, seventy-two . . .” people would say, “Well, they had a good innings!” But when the bell stopped at eighteen or twenty a hush would come over the fields. People were supposed to pray for the departed soul, and some of them may have done. This practice was continued up until the Second World War, when all the bells of England were silenced. It was never revived. The sexton got a shilling for ringing the death-bell.

  I left the village when I was eighteen and went into the guards, which meant Windsor and London. I met the ringers in these places and became very accomplished. I think I can say this without being boastful. I have been a regular ringer ever since. It is such a fascinating art, you see. I know all the bells in Suffolk—and other counties, too, for that matter. I think I have just passed my two thousandth tower. Cathedrals, minsters, priories, abbeys, churches and the secular bells at Windsor Castle, I have rung them all.

  Ringing requires a lot more mental than physical application, particularly now when the modern bell-composers create such wonderful changes and the bells are hung so beautifully they don’t need great strength to move them. But of course you have to be fit to be able to swing a bell for two or three hours at a stretch and “put it in its place,” as we say. You also have to be bitten by the bug. You have to be smitten. If you are a real ringer you think about bells morning, noon and night, and you only live for the next time you can have a go at them. You have your ringing books and a lot of study at home. An old ringer at Hasketon told me, “You must learn it at home and ring it in the tower.”

  One of the fascinating things about ringing is that there are about 5,500 peals of bells in the British Isles, ranging from rings of five to peals of twelve. So, you see, you can travel to the towers all your life and still find something new. The towers have a great effect on the sound of the bells which hang in them. The tower here is soft red brick and it absorbs the strike notes, whereas in a modern tower made of concrete and steel you would get a harsh bell note. The old bricks soak up the sound and sweeten it. The taller the tower, the quieter the bells in the village itself. The shorter, the louder. Nowadays, the tendency is to hang the bells about twelve feet lower than the louvres in the belfry windows, so that the noise can come up and then go out across the land. The notes of the bells are distributed evenly. Some towers “burl out,” as we say, and it can be most unpleasant. If you want to stop burling you have to board or brick the windows up until only a small opening is left at the top.

  The average weight of a bell in Suffolk is about eleven hundredweight—as against the tenor bell in St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is sixty-two hundredweight. When we say “ring of bells” we mean towers where there are peals of five, six, eight, ten and twelve bells. An eleven-hundredweight bell would be the largest of these. People are very attached to old bells because they have spoken for the village so long and are its angel voices, or because they listened to them when they were courting and were young and happy. But I have to reluctantly say that, for those who understand bells, modern bells are best because they have been scientifically tuned. Much of the old bell-making was a hit-or-miss affair. The bell-makers were like a woman with a cake who could turn out four or five passable efforts to every one which was perfect. It was just the same with the bell metal. If it was poured too hot it would split the bell, and if it was too cold it would spoil it. But with a thermometer the modern bellman knows exactly when to pour his metal. He also has instruments to tune his bell 100 per cent perfect. A new bell today is in tune with itself as well as with the other bells in its peal. A bell can be in the key of D but it will still contain many other tones and a bell-founder of today will know how to get rid of these other tones. In the old days a man would cast many bells of the same dimension and yet no two would be alike. It was rule of thumb. And it is just a myth that a silver coin was put in the bell metal because all bell metal, n
ow as then, is about two-thirds copper and one-third tin—and nothing more. Tuning was then done by chipping at the inside of the bell to flatten the tone and chipping at the edge to sharpen it. But it was all very hit and miss. Too many chips might come off—or not enough—and the bell-founder had only his ear to guide him. Now we trim the bell to agree with a tuning machine. The old bellfounders were itinerate workers. When a village wanted bells they would bring their tools to the churchyard, dig a pit and make a furnace. The bell core was baked whole and then the outer cope was made. More metal was poured into the space between the inner core and the cope. When it was cool, the top was either lifted off or broken off, and there was your bell in its crude state. Then came the tuning and the hanging. It was a great business. One of the finest bells in the world is in Suffolk. It is the Lavenham tenor which Miles Gray made in 1625. It is known to be the sweetest bell in England.

  Most of the bell-frames round here are between four and five hundred years old but if they are replaced iron and steel is used, not wood. A bell-frame must be absolutely rigid otherwise it will affect the swinging of the bell and hurt the ringer. The towers sway a lot during the peals. Most of the Suffolk towers sway tremendously, particularly St. Mary’s at Woodbridge. The vibration of the bells is said to fracture the towers but architects will laugh at this and say it is rubbish.

  Before change-ringing came in, bells were used just to make great grave sounds on important occasions, or simply jangled. Then Fabian Stedman evolved a system by which they could be used to make real music. His method is still the most popular today. It is one which is rung on odd numbers of bells—on five, seven, nine or eleven bells. But there has to be an even number of bells to ring it, which sounds rather paradoxical. In other words, you ring “Stedman” on the front five bells with the largest bell, called the tenor, covering. It would be 2–1–4–3–5 with the tenor bell coming in behind. It produces the best music. After Stedman died, the country people amused themselves by making variations on his method until, all over England, there was a great rage for ringing. The names of men who made important attempts to ring Grandsire Triples, Bob Major, Stedman Caters, Tittum Bob Royal, etc. were painted on boards and hung up in the towers. The great Suffolk ringers were the Chenerys from Wilby, the Banisters from Woolpit and the Baileys from Leiston. The Baileys were eleven brothers and they were ringing in the towers round here just before the Great War. Six other brothers, the Wightmans from Framsden, were ringing at the same time. They rang a seven method Minor peal at Monewdon on March 18th 1914. They had to take their father with them to do this, of course.

  The maximum number of changes which can be rung on eight bells is 40,320. This is called “accomplishing the extent” and it was accomplished on the foundry bells at Loughborough. It took seventeen hours, fifty-nine minutes. It presented a challenge, you see, just as Everest presented a challenge to our friend Hillary. If you are the conductor of a peal you have in your mind a picture of how those bells have to be kept going without one single change repeating itself. And so at intervals the conductor has to make a call which changes the work of the bells.

  The ringers are now able to do far more than what was possible forty years ago or more. Some of their sons have been to the university and have applied their mathematical brain power to the art. My youngest son is a most brilliant ringer and probably one of the greatest ringers in the world. He is a mathematician and he was getting things out on paper when he was five years old. He went to the village school, then to the grammar school and then to the university. Nothing ever came difficult to him. He conducts and composes. Where bells are concerned there is nothing he cannot do.

  There are new ringing methods composed all the time but people who are not ringers do not hear the tunes. I should say that ninety-nine per cent of the people just hear “bells ringing.” That is all. Many first-class ringers are tone-deaf and the bells to them are just a noise. It is all figures to them. But when I hear the bells I think, my goodness, how beautiful! How wonderful! The combinations of sounds delight me. If you read the peal boards in the Suffolk towers you will be reading the names of many happy men.

  Sammy Whitelaw · aged fifty-eight · farrier

  I started ringing when I was fifteen—and walking too! Ringing and walking went together. The ringers from Cretingham would walk to Eye and those from Brandeston would walk to Woodbridge, and you’d get some ringers who would damn-near walk across England. That’s a fact. You would meet them walking about all over Suffolk, looking for a good tower. Bell-mad, we were. I wasn’t all that good. I could manage about 720 changes and that is about as far as I could go. Stedman started all this, you know. Most of the ringers I knew are dead and gone. I watched them, I did what they did, but it’s a funny thing I couldn’t ever do more than the 720 changes. I remember ringing one harvest time and the bell flew clean off the frame. Imagine that! Bell-tongues and our tongues stopped together then! “That’s a masterpiece!” old Charlie said. I can hear him saying it. The expert ringers used to call ringers like me “turkey-drivers.” I didn’t want to be a turkey-driver but you can’t always choose what you want to be in this mortal life. I knew a ringer who could ring the bell up once, make it wait, and catch a second toll as it came down. True. I wanted to do that but I couldn’t.

  I remember one cold November—I couldn’t tell you how long ago—and a woman came to me and said, “My Billy has passed, Sam. Ring the bell.” I said, “How can I do that, Ma’am? The tower has all been scaffolded for the repairs.” So off she went sorrowful. Then I had an idea. I climbed up into the bell-chamber, sat on the frame and banged the passing-bell with my hammer! I thought, old Billy won’t mind. It was that bloody cold. But all could hear of the passing and take note.

  Billy was one of the old people. The old people have gone and have taken a lot of truth out of the world with them. When Billy died, his wife walked down the garden and told the bees, and hung black crêpe on the hive. My grandfather did this, too. He said that if you didn’t, the bees would die as well. Bees are dangerous to some folk and a gift to others. You’ll get someone who’ll get stung once and perish and another who’ll get stung all over and get cured of all manner of things. There were a rare lot of bees in the village in those days. When they swarmed we used to all rush out into the garden with the fire-irons and scuttle and bang away; that brought them down.

  I hope you like this village. I have lived here all my days and have been happy enough.

  4. TO BE A FARMER’S BOY?

  That is the land of lost content,

  I see it shining plain,

  The happy highways where I went

  And cannot come again.

  —A. E. Housman

  THE DRIFT from agriculture intensifies. Only ten per cent of the boys leaving rural schools in 1967 wanted to do farm work although it offered a beginner’s wage which was often considerably more than that offered by most other jobs in the neighbourhood. But the young people from the village cannot be enticed by this or by the famous perks of the industry—a practically rent-free cottage when they marry, free milk, wood and potatoes, and being able to have dinner at home every day. Two things, the first imprecise and emotional, the second a hard blunt fact, decide the issue. They are that young men in the 1960s prefer the more impersonal contract between a firm and its employees to the farm’s “special relationship” and that they know that after they are twenty-one they are likely to be earning half or even twice as much again in any job other than farming.

  The present abandonment of the farms is on the same scale as that of the decade 1871–81, when 200,000 labourers fled their villages for Australia and Canada. Between 1962–7 men have left the land at the rate of 20,000 a year and the figure is now approaching 30,000. The great difference between the two emigrations is that in the 1870s the farms were at their worst, choking in a depression which lasted until the Second World War, when the nation’s food needs broke it, and that in 1968 England’s farms are incomparable and one of the wo
nders of the agricultural world. Yet only a fraction of the ten per cent of young people going into farming really recognize the excitements of what in essence is a second agricultural revolution. The remainder take to farm work because, perhaps, they have inherited the small residual static quality in all village life, that thing which is either condemned as apathy or praised and envied as contentment, but yet which is really neither of these. The attitude contains something determined and enduring, and also incorporates some kind of duty or loyalty to the village fields. Questioned as to why he hasn’t joined his friends on some £20-a-week development scheme in Ipswich, works-bus waiting to carry him from door to site, or why he hasn’t followed a brother to New South Wales, the farm loyalist is unable to find words to explain the actual meaning of his life and falls back on sentimental clichés about “peace” and the “open air.” One senses some more ancient pull for which there is no adequate sociological heading. It is the nucleus of these “opportunity”-resistant farm-minders which becomes the village proper. They are rooted-in deep and before they are middle-aged their lives have become entirely circumscribed by the parish boundaries. A car will carry them to events within a fifty-mile radius and television will open up the world nightly, but neither will extend them. The question confronting many employers, with their highly sophisticated new farming, is, are the undoubted qualities of these acceptance villagers those needed for the mechanized and scientific agricultural industry? Should it not be attracting the restless, imaginative, creative, questioning countryman? Should it not be attracting, as one critic has suggested, not “workers” entirely but a new kind of professional who can earn £1,000 a year? The present position is getting dangerous. British agriculture, rescued by the war and made to flower as it never did before, is being avoided like the plague by the more intelligent rural worker.