Tower Captain Cliff Bennett (1911-94) chats below with Don Chapman (pen name Anthony Wood) for The Oxford Times: the photo and report are dated 3 January 1977.
LAST NIGHT there was a special quarter peal before evening service at St Leonard’s Church, Eynsham, to mark Cliff Bennett’s golden jubilee as a bellringer. But fittingly it was at midnight on Friday when the 65-year-old captain of the tower heaved on the bell-rope to ring in the New Year that he actually celebrated 50 years in the same belfry.
As the certificate issued by the Oxford Diocesan Guild of Bellringers shows, it was on January 1, 1927 that 15-year-old Clifford became a recognised member of the Eynsham band, though he reckons it was about six months earlier that he first climbed the tower.
Went aloft
“Nowadays a certificate is issued more or less on the captain’s say-so,” he says. “In those days you had to serve a sort of apprenticeship — ring in three or four towers and complete 120 changes before you qualified.”
He went aloft at the invitation of Eynsham grocer and baker William Stevens with whom he had just started work as a baker's boy at the corner of Swan Street and High Street where the Co-op is now. "In those days the village had four bakers,” he recalls. “Whitlocks, Stevens, Hills and Biggers. Now I suppose it's lucky to have one.”
Jason Trinder was the captain. Jack Pickett used to ring the tenor. And one of Cliff's great mates was Tom Bond. In all, there were some eight or ten of them who took it in turns to ring the church's peal of six bells on holy days and holidays. They weren't a fancy band of ringers like the team at Appleton who were breaking world records with their exploits in the belfry. “They could ring Grandsire Doubles and that was about all,” says Cliff.
1937 captain
“But they could ring in time and you could rely on them to turn up.” In other words, they were a good honest team of village ringers. And when Jason Trinder retired about 1937 Cliff was delighted to take over as captain, a position he has held ever since.
After the outbreak of the Second World War the church bells were silent for a time — their ringing was supposed to signal an invasion — and when they restarted Cliff had to teach young girls the ropes in his spare time from his job at Cowley, where he was employed for the last 39 years of his working life. But every Sunday morning and evening the bells continued to summon the faithful of Eynsham to church. As a teacher and friend Harry Floyd of Cassington was a big help, and after the war the belfry took on a new lease of life.
In 1947 Cliff established an annual half-day outing to ring in four or five towers, which continued until about three years ago when the jaunt became too expensive. And in the late 50s or early 60s the Eynsham team became the first holders of the shield put up for competition by the Witney and Woodstock branch of the Diocesan Guild.
Narrow defeat
“The second year we lost it by half-a-point,” Cliff recalls. “Then we won it six years on the trot. After that, the other teams got fed up with being beaten and it stayed in our tower for several years until Witney suggested reviving the competition. “They’d got a strong team of ringers, you see, and they knew mine wasn't quite as good as it used to be. So we revived the competition and they've won it the last two years. But I still reckon I got cheated out of that shield,” he adds with a twinkle in his eye.
Some things have changed. At the suggestion of the last Vicar, the Rev JWG Westwood — “I've seen a smart few vicars,” Cliff says — the bellringers gave up the practice of collecting from door to door in Eynsham at Christmastime and accepted the proceeds of the church collection on Christmas Eve instead. And though bellringing remains thirsty work there are no longer the famous sessions there used to be. “The Queen's Head used to be our headquarters and many a good evening we've had there. We don't have a regular headquarters now,” Cliff says a little wistfully.
But he's proud of his present team — Albert Hicks (Vicar's Warden), Susan Ayres, Angela Wright. twin-brothers Alan and David Brown, Albert Harris (tenor), Herbert Miles, and the one or two others who help out from time to time — and can always muster a full ring for a wedding, a jubilee or other special occasions.
Of the 100 or so ringers who have passed through his hands down the years the one he most regrets losing is David Floyd who had to move away because of his job. “He was nominated to ring at Churchill's funeral and I quite thought he was the man to follow me,” he says. “At the moment I've no obvious successor.”
Not that he’s any intention of retiring. “Bellringing is wonderful exercise," he says, “and I hope to keep going for a good few more years yet. Once you’ve learned you never forget you know. Lottie Pimm still rings for me occasionally when I ask her — and she's in her seventies.”
IN 1987 a special service was held to celebrate 60 years of ringing Eynsham bells by Mr Cliff Bennett, when a Full Peal of 5040 changes was rung in his honour. He told me that the only other Full Peal in Eynsham this century was in 1927, the year in which he became a Ringer. – Lilian Wright, Eynsham Record 10, 1993.