This year’s flower festival which will run during Open Churches’ Week will be commemorating those who served in The Great War.

If you have any information about any member of your family who served in World War One, whether they have ties to Saxlingham or not, we would love to hear from you so we can tell their story.  Please email info @ saxlinghambells.org.uk (remove the spaces) or contact Lynn Roberts using the details given in June’s Contact.

After the flower festival we will be looking to collect information about those who have served in more recent conflicts starting with The Second World War.  Please let us know if you have any information you would like to share with us.

If you visit Long Stratton Library they currently have a display about Saxlingham Nethergate including the bells and the stained glass of the church.

Part of the display is taken from Jan Fox’s website, Saxlingham War Memorials, which is well worth a look.

Also on display is a history of the village from the 1950s and a tithe map.

We understand the display will be up for the next week or so – please do pop in and have a look and support our local library.

Do you want to know more about the bells? Do you want to learn to ring?

Bells have been ringing from Saxlingham Church tower since at least 1455. At the end of last year the old ring of eight was, with the help of a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, replaced by a lovely new ring of bells. Our reason for doing this was to preserve the heritage of bells being rung in Saxlingham. Not only do the bells sound so much better than the old ones, they are very much easier to ring. The old ones had become very hard to ring, and it was no longer easy to teach new ringers on them. We can do this on the new ring, and, moreover, we can teach youngsters to ring them. By doing this, we will be able to preserve the ringing tradition in the village.

Anyone from 8 to 80 could learn to ring a bell!

On Saturday July 12^th between 2pm and 4pm we will be holding an open afternoon, so that anyone who wishes can come along and see (and hear) the bells, and may-be have a go at ringing one. Anyone and everyone will be welcome.

Go on, give it a try. You always wanted to, didn’t you?