Arthur Craven's headstone

While preparing my video about Yorkshire Maximus, I discovered that Arthur Craven, who composed Yorkshire Major and its extensions, is buried in Sheffield and has a marvellous headstone. Last weekend I happened to be in Sheffield visiting my sister, and we decided to go and find the grave.

Arthur Craven is also mentioned in my video about Bristol, as he was involved in the discussion about how to extend it from major to royal - although I'm not absolutely sure he was the originator of the extension as this obituary suggests.

Visiting Craven's grave was a bit of reconnaissance for an evolving idea. As the Central Council meeting and Ringing Roadshow will be taking place in Sheffield during the first weekend in September, I am hoping to assemble a handbell band to ring some Yorkshire next to the grave. Maybe even a quarter of either major or royal. In a while I will try to use the magic of Facebook to recruit ringers, but meanwhile if anyone is expecting to be within range on Saturday 6th September and would like to join in, please let me know.

We had a session with Jessica and Colin this afternoon. We have previously worked on some exercises leading towards Kent, especially treble bob hunting and Bastow, so today we decided to intensively practise Kent places. This is in preparation for out handbell day on Saturday, when I have scheduled both...

For once, everything proceeded exactly according to plan!

We started by slotting in an extra quarter on Friday evening. When I discovered that Matt would be arriving relatively early, I thought I'd better organise something to occupy us for the evening, so we rang Bob Major for Zoé's first handbell...

We rang another quarter of Stedman last week, this time with Julia conducting. There was a false start but after that we rang well, and Julia did some impressive correcting of mistakes. We're not ringing this week, but next week it's my turn to conduct, which I will do from...