Bell-ringing makes you feel so young

Nov 19 2008 By Adam Courtney, Staines News

"Thursday evening, 7.30 - you start ringing here!"

Little did the 12-year-old Dennis Brock know then, but those words, barked at him in the 1930s, would be the start of an enduring passion. They came from the tower captain of St Mary's

Church, Lower Sunbury, after Dennis's bell-ringing cousin was taken ill and Dennis, who had been in the church choir for three years, was asked to hand in the sicknote.

"I presented it and stood and watched the captain for a while, before realising I had to get back to the choir.

"As I was at the door, the captain shouted at me, and that was it.

"You did as you were told then. I don't think they'd get away with it today."

Seventy-seven years and more than 1,000 churches and cathedrals later, Dennis is still bell-ringing. On Saturday, November 29, to mark his 90th birthday, eight of his fellow bell-ringers at St Mary's, some of whom were his pupils, will ring a full peal of 5,000 bell changes, lasting about three hours, in his honour.

Dennis' sheer longevity at the church - in 1946 it was the venue for his wedding to Joyce, who died last year, and his baptism - is just one aspect of this man's extraordinary life.

He has been tower captain at St Mary's for 55 years and still rings the bells up to four times a week. He is fit and bright, his mental and physical health a constant source of wonder to his doctor, his daughter, Lorna, and to him. He puts it down to years of cycling and, poignantly, his role with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War.

With an impish grin, he says: "I'm so fit and well, it's amazing. The only thing wrong with me is my hearing. I was a great cyclist and used to bike to services all over the county. "I remember going from Exeter to Sunbury in one night and I also trekked up to Lincoln. I was very lightweight, still am, and don't real-ly know where I got all the power from."

That grin, a constant feature of our conversation, subsides somewhat when he recounts the war, and it's no surprise. As a Dunkirk veteran and prisoner of war in Libya, Italy and Dresden, listening to him speak of his experiences leaves me wondering how this kindly, gentle man survived to tell the tale.

He said: "I very nearly didn't make it. We were encircled in Egypt and only just managed to escape after several failed night-time attempts.

"On another occasion I was captured alone. My friends were dead and I had been shot in the hand. Some Germans came and started prodding everyone to see who was alive and they looked after me, giving me bandages. "In Dresden we were there the night the city was wiped out - thousands were killed.

"By then I had seen a lot of death on the battlefield and was used to it, but nothing had prepared me for seeing dead women and children as Idid that night.

"It was terrible, but I suppose it brought the end of the war nearer."

After that he walked to the Czech border, where they were met by Americans who flew them to Brussels and then he was flown home.

He believes those days have helped him cope without his soul-mate, Joyce, with whom he shared his home in Loudwater Road for their entire 61-year marriage.

He still imagines her coming into the living room every day.

But he's taken up the housekeeping duties and, of course, is still as committed to his bellringing as ever. "I'm philosophical about these things," he says. "She just had a tired heart."

But Dennis' heart will never grow tired of the bellringing, which has taken him to Windsor to ring for the Queen Mother and to St Paul's Cathedral

The intricacies of bellringing are difficult for the uninitiated to grasp, but a conductor directs the ringers to play combinations of eight bells, making sure they never repeat the same permutations. Dennis says you need to be mathematical, rhythmic and fit.

On Saturday, others, for once, will be doing the work for him, but in no way does it mark the end of his bell-ringing. That would be impossible, as Dennis explains: "It's an addiction and you don't give up until you are physically unable to carry on. The bells are there and they need to be rung."