After having a boost in the number of ringers at University of Leicester, the students have come together to restart the dormant society. The society hasn’t been active since around 2004, when students started to be directed to Oadby, St Peter’s as the society was shut down due to student turnover. Since then, a few quarters and peals have been rung by members of the society in the past, but now with a fresh roll of students, the paperwork has been filed and approved for the Leicester Universities Society of Change Ringers to reappear. The society encompasses students from both University of Leicester and De Montfort University, staff of these universities, and alumni of either university. With the Loughborough society in abeyance, any students in Loughborough who want to join in on some university ringing are welcome to join us too.

We plan to run biweekly practices at a range of towers across Leicester, including St Mary de Castro, Knighton, and Oadby. The society is going to be focussed on the progression of the students’ ringing, utilising help from alumni who wish to support us. We hope to cultivate an enjoyable for all involved, hopefully creating lasting memories like those that so many speak of so fondly when remembering their days ringing with a university society. We can teach new recruits as well, with ART level 1 accredited ringing teachers, hopefully helping to boost our numbers further. We also have a set of society-owned handbells too, for anyone who fancies giving handbells a go!

Recently, to celebrate the restarting of the society, we rung a quarter peal of a new variation which we chose to name Leicester Universities Doubles. This choice was to make sure that we could have as many of our students in the band as possible, and then we also had representation from staff and alumni too. This was a great success and was the first step to helping the students to gain new ringing skills.

Overall, we have an exciting future ahead of us as a society, with many events and ideas to act on, and hopefully we will boost our numbers further with the more traction we gain. We plan on having a big presence at the University of Leicester “Freshers’ Fair” at the start of the next academic year, so if you plan on coming to Leicester (or are already here), then come say hello!

Joseph Blake