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Conversation Overheard in the White Horse, Steyning
March 2107 between John Cobley aged 82 and Maurice Bland, 35.

M: My kids run in from the garden one evening last week saying they could hear a strange sound in the distance coming from the town.  It was sometime before I got out there to check what it might be, I think I caught the very end of a bit of bellringing.

J: Could’ve been.  I never heard them myself, must be ten years or more since I last heard ‘em.

M: What would they have been ringing for?

J: Can’t say, could’ve been one of the old Christian festivals.  There’s one or two bands of ringers in the region who take their own gear – ropes and the like – with ‘em and go round the old towns where they’ve not taken the bells out an’ sold ‘em.

M: Now you say that, I think it was one of them groups I saw over Pulborough a year or two ago in that pub not far from what’s left of the church there.  Heavy drinkers by all appearances; they were using a lot of terms and words none of us had ever heard before; I don’t know how much it was the drink or proper old fashioned technical language.

J: That adds up; I’ve ‘eard the old time ringers were known for their drinking.  Even when they gave up ringing they used to drink together every Sunday evening.  There was still a few of ‘em around when I was a lad.  Ringing was on its last legs then, but the bells were still rung from time to time.  My grandfather told me he could remember hearing bells every Sunday in most of the villages round here. 

M: So why did it die out, and when?

J: End of the 20th century – religion had been gradually losing its grip.  Before that, they used to keep Sundays very strict sort of thing – no shopping not a lot of sport, all that sort of thing, but it disappeared with a vengeance I’ve ‘eard tell round about the new millennium.  By the time I can remember anything, they were turning a lot of the churches into museums – or like Steyning ‘ere, kep’ a bit for the church stuff and made the rest into a performance ‘all.  It co-incided with the technology which could make it look like anything they wanted it to look like.

M: So had people just given up believing?

J: A lot of ‘em – that’s if they ever did really believe.  From what I’ve read and bin told – it was just a habit for most of ‘em; it sort of connected them with happy childhood memories and what they wanted to believe.  An’ ringers never did go into church much anyway, the tower was as far as they got.  Even the choir who got into church was more there for the singing.  Singing and ringing was more than believing.

M: Except for the groups that went on with services without the church buildings.

J: Oh yes, I expect you know the old Church of England, as it was called, got itself broke up – some of ‘em joined up with the Roman Catholics and the rest fell apart into splinter groups that met in ‘alls and ‘ouses.  They couldn’t keep any sort of togetherness; they were always falling out on some point of doctrine or other.  You can still find a few of them even now – there’s a group of about a dozen meet in a house down the road from where you live.

M: Yes, I have noticed them meeting on a Sunday; I didn’t know who they were.  You’ve seen a lot of changes in your lifetime, John – and your family have been in this place for hundreds of years.  You ought to be writing something down, ‘cos it’s more than religion and bells that’ve gone isn’t it?

J: My goodness yes, Sussex went when I was a boy.  That’s when the regions were introduced. They rang the bells for the end of Sussex – right affair that was, they rang what they called muffled, like they used to do at funerals, and they ‘ad a Sussex flag at ‘alf mast on the tower flagpole.  I can piccure my old granddad standing at the garden gate listening to the bells and holding his cap in ‘is ’and.  It come just after the mid winter festival and it was bitter cold – he come in frozen and in a week he was dead; they said if he couldn’t live in Sussex he didn’t want to live at all.  Yet cold as it was that was the first time them daffs along the old bank by the church come into flower before the year was out.

M: And they used to be spring flowers didn’t they?  That was about the time I think I was told the Pagans started to win a lot of support.  Do you remember any of that, like them coming up on the floods and holding ceremonies to get the water levels down?

J: That’s one of my earliest memories.  I was taken down by Bramber Castle and we watched the barges floating upstream along the route of the old valley road.  They was all decorated with masts of flowers and the Pagans were chanting and tossing flowers into the water and banging gongs and beating drums like they do today.  I suppose that’s the sounds that ‘as taken over from the old church bells.

M: It’s like History has gone into reverse really.  The Christians took over from the Pagans and built churches on the old sites, and now the Pagans are back, and Steyning has a port again; it seems there’s sometimes more Frenchmen here on sale days than locals, but of course it’s a smaller town now with all that housing lost close to the water.

J: Did you hear that old Steyning Stone has disappeared?  They say one of the Pagan groups must have claimed it as theirs since it’s said it was the stone for pagan worship back before that Cuthman made old Steyning Christian.  Some of them Pagans are telling the story that it moved itself from what was the old church porch and planted itself in the woods somewhere where only the true Pagans can find it.

M: Seems there are more silly stories about now than there were in early Christian days; seems we dart between a heartless logic and childish incredulity.  Are we better or worse than we were say a hundred years ago?

J: Maybe we go round in circles; I don’t know but I don’t think your children will see the things that was still just about around when I was born: snow and Christmas, Sussex, church and bells.  I reckon they could be gone for another thousand years.
George Cockman, Steyning


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