Last year Winchester Cathedral’s Education Department organised 204 Primary School visits, and over 21,000 children took part.

For this annual Church Schools event, over 1,600 children attended over three days in June.

To support the three bell-ringing workshops, over 50 volunteers took part from the Winchester and Portsmouth Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers.

It is hoped that some of the 300 children, having taken part in these bell-ringing workshops, will want to take up the hobby of bell-ringing at their local churches. Accordingly their teachers were provided with briefing notes on their visit, to enable them to respond to their pupils’ enquiries on what they had seen and done. Also each child was given a general leaflet about bell-ringing with contact details for their local church tower.

The Guild was founded in 1879 for the ‘encouragement of ringing for Divine Service, cultivation of change ringing, and the preservation of church bells in an efficient condition’.

More information about the Guild’s activities can be found on its web site
www.wp-ringers.org.uk

or by contacting its General Secretary, Pam Thompson,
10, Wallington Drive,
Chandlers Ford,
Eastleigh, SO53 1TR
(023 8026 0380)
Email

Church School Days 2005

Church Primary Schools in the Winchester Diocese have the opportunity each year of taking part in the workshop programme, which concludes with a service in the Cathedral. Because of the demand, there will be four of these in 2005, two in March and two in June. Further enquiries should be directed regarding these should be directed to – Cheryl Bryan, Director of Education, Winchester Cathedral (telephone 01962 857224 email: cheryl.bryan@winchester-cathedral.org.uk)