Author: Gary

Owen was a North Buckinghamshire ringer for most of his life, having learned to ring at Stoke Goldington in the mid 1930s. He was taught by Ernie Shouler, and rang at Stoke for the next eighty years. In the early days Owen recalled ringing at many towers in the area, anywhere that was within cycling distance. He would also recount that things were very different in the 1930s and 40s. If you missed your sally or committed some other ringing misdemeanour, that was it, you didn’t get asked to ring again!

Arthur Armstrong was Tower Captain at Stoke when Owen succeeded him some forty years ago, and for many years he ran a successful Friday evening practice, alternating with Olney. Grandsire was a favourite…. The annual Stoke Goldington ringers’ outing was apparently legendary, with competition for spare seats on the coach! There are forty six recorded Branch Quarter Peals that include Owen, mostly rung in his home tower, but sometimes venturing over the parish borders to Tyringham, Weston Underwood, Hanslope, Olney and Emberton. He only rang one peal, 5040 Plain Bob Minor in 1963 at Stoke, which was for the Patronal Festival and the first on the bells since being augmented to six in 1952.

In 1941 at Gayhurst Church Owen married another Stoke ringer, Winifred Croot. Although she gave up ringing later, the Croot family featured strongly in the Stoke ringing records for many years. Sadly Winifred died just nineteen days after Owen.

Owen was elected a member of the Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers in 1935 at the Branch AGM at Newport Pagnell. He was made an Honorary Member of the Guild in March 1991 at another AGM, and then the Guild Master, Jon Chamberlain, attended a Branch practice at Stoke in July 2005 to recognise Owen’s 70 years of Guild Membership.

Model making was another of Owen’s keen interests. He worked at Vauxhall in Luton and was involved in making models of the cars that were being developed prior to production. He used this skill to make models connected with ringing. There are many of his rope spiders in towers in the area, bell table lamps, model bells, and a scale model of Stoke Goldington bells before augmentation.

Latterly, Owen was unable to ring but he always maintained a lively interest in ringing matters, most recently following the progress of the new band of ringers at Stoke Goldington.

Quarter Peals in celebration of Owen’s life were rung by his ringing friends at his home towers of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood on the day after the funeral. Plain Bob Minor at Stoke, and Grandsire Doubles at Weston Underwood, which had 96 calls, one for each year of his life. Winifred and Owen’s funeral was well attended by members of the North Bucks Branch and the Guild Banner was on display in the Chapel.

We remember Owen with both affection and gratitude.

St Peter, Stoke Goldington
Friday 16^th January 2015
1260 Plain Bob Minor

1 Roy Keeves
2 Alan Cozens
3 Ian Thompson
4 Charles Knight
5 Phil Haslam
6 Tony Gray (C)

Rung to celebrate the lives of Owen and Winifred Warren.

St Laurence, Weston Underwood
Friday 16^th January 2015
1260 Grandsire Doubles

1 Adam Hird
2 Nick Read
3 Nicki King
4 Charles Knight
5 Doug Hird (C)
6 Liz Sheaf

Rung to celebrate the life of Owen Warren.
Rung with 96 calls, one for each year of Owen’s life.

Sheila Watts

Lou will be remembered by ringers as a regular member of the Newport congregation and by some of us as a teacher at Newport’s Infant School, now Cedars. As a teacher, she was memorable in treating her pupils as real people. She treated us with respect but expected us to behave as adults. A few years after retiring, Lou learned to ring at Newport. She was a branch member between 1976 and 1985 and was eventually able to hunt the treble with reasonable reliability. She would occasionally join us whenever we went out to ring at other towers, especially in the Newport area.

Her ability to write out documents with extreme neatness found a job in writing out the peal and quarter peal records at Newport. She also applied the same neatness in marriage registers and on occasions, when wedding parties spent an age signing their names, we would joke that Lou was reverting to her old job and teaching them all to write.

After persevering with ringing for some time Lou eventually had to give it up. She retained a strong interest however, and would frequently ask how the band was progressing or watch our progress from the body of the church.

Lou died on Monday 5^th January in Newport. She asked to be buried in Newton Longville, close to her family.

Doug Hird

I am sorry to inform you that Lou Moodie, a ringer who learnt at Newport and was a branch member between 1976 and 1985, died on Monday 5 January.

Further details of the funeral will be available in due course.

North Bucks Branch Secretary

I am sorry to inform you that Bob Winstanley, a ringer at Loughton and Shenley for many years, died at home on 11 January 2015.

Bob requested that there should be no funeral service nor attendance at the crematorium.

North Bucks Branch Secretary

I am sorry to inform you that Owen Warren, member of the Branch and Guild for over 79 years, and Honorary member for the last 24 years, died on Christmas Eve aged 96.

He rang widely in the Branch in his day, and was a ringer and tower captain at Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood for many decades.

The funeral is on Thursday 15​th January, 11.45 am at Crownhill Crematorium.  Then afterwards at The Lamb at Stoke Goldington.

North Bucks Branch Secretary