Students ring for the King
Bellringing students from the University of Southampton will be ringing all six sets of bells in the city on Saturday (6 May), to mark the coronation of King Charles III.
They are supporting the national bellringing effort to have as many bells pealing across the country as possible – a campaign dubbed Ring for the King.
The students are members of the Southampton University Guild of Change Ringers (SUGCR) and they will be attempting a ‘quarter peal’ – approximately 45 minutes of continuous ringing – at Southampton’s six rings of church bells. University staff member Dr Samuel Senior, Research Engineer in Electronics and Computer Science, will also join them for two of the quarter peals.
Luke Brooke, Ringing Master for SUGCR and third year Maths student at the university, said: “We really want to get all the bells across Southampton ringing for the King’s coronation, and to take part in Ring for the King. So, if you hear them on Saturday, that will be us!”
Their ringing will culminate at the Hartley Twelve, a set of 12 mini bells that belongs to SUGCR and is housed in St Mary’s Church, Swaythling. This mini set of bells was fundraised for and installed – initially in the Student Union building at the university’s Highfield Campus – in 1999 to give the student ringers their own bells and Southampton its first set of 12 bells.
The other bells SUGCR will ring on Saturday are St Mary’s Church in St Mary Street, St Michael’s Church in St Michael’s Square, Ascension Church in Thorold Road, St Barnabas Church in Lodge Road, and St Nicholas Church in Stoneham Lane.