St James Norton

the GREAT church

Bellringing at St James

The bells at St. James are a ring of 8 which were cast and installed in 1896 by John Taylor & Co, of Loughborough in Leicestershire. They were the first full octave tuned according to the Simpson principle made by Taylors, a famous company - they are a fine example of Taylor bells of that period. They are a pleasure both to ring and to listen to.

The local band of ringers include a mixture of age, gender and experience and meet at the church on a Monday evening for practice. We nearly always manage to ring all 8 bells at some stage in the evening but Method ringing is quite basic. We are, however, making steady progress.

Sunday morning ringing is done with the assistance of our friends from St John's, Dronfield and we manage to ring 6 or 8 bells every Sunday. This association goes back a very long time; although St James is a Sheffield Tower and in the Diocese of Sheffield, for most of its life it was a Derbyshire tower and in the See of Canterbury. It is good that we can still maintain links across administrative boundaries.

The bellringing team