The Heyhouses Ring

St. Annes on the Sea, Lancashire

Owner: Stuart Newton

The Heyhouses Ring is a six bell mini-ring using John Norris dumbbell frames and bells cast by Matthew Higby and Co. Ltd.

The static ring evolved after I ordered a 3m x 3m Summer House kit and I was asked a casual question as to whether I intended to transfer the one dumbbell I had in my loft into it. A check of the specification revealed that it would not be possible to ring it standing up, without raising the walls and adjusting the roof pitch. Fortunately, a local ringer, Ashley Wilson, is also a joiner and he confirmed that he would be able to produce a design and supply and fit the additional materials required.

In the meantime, I then thought that if all that work was going to be undertaken, would it be possible to house a ring of six? John Norris kindly (and quickly!) rose to the challenge and produced a proposed layout:-

The bell in position F is the Treble and it is a clockwise ring.

The rest, as they say, is history. Orders were placed and, within four months of the original question being asked, the Heyhouses Ring was opened on June 26th, 2021 when the first Quarter Peal (Plain Bob Minor) was rung using Abel software. It was inevitable that I was going to add real bells at some point.

Six bells were cast in 2022 and following their installation and structural strengthening of the frame, the Heyhouses Ring became a mini-ring in March 2023.

Why is it called "Heyhouses” ?

“St. Anne’s”, as a town name, only came into being in the 1870s after Lady Eleanor Cecily Clifton had paid for the construction of a daughter Church to St. Cuthbert’s Church, Lytham, to be built in the area then known as the Hey Houses.

In 1873, the new Church was consecrated and dedicated to St. Anne (the mother of St. Mary) and, in the following years, the area became known as St. Anne’s.

It is said that the reason for such generosity by Lady Clifton was that too many of the Hey Houses residents, who had to walk past a local hostelry, The Trawl Boat Inn, on their way to worship at St. Cuthbert’s Church, stopped off there on the way and then never actually made it to the Church Service.

Records show that Lady Clifton got her way when the Trawl Boat Inn was finally closed down in 1883 after repeated reports of “drunkenness, fighting and other shenanigans”.