Stephanie Warboys

Stephanie learnt to ring at Kettering, Northamptonshire, which was then a very poor 23cwt ring of 10. When she learned, she had no previous connection to ringing but was immediately fascinated by it and desperately keen to master different and increasingly difficult methods and meet all the interesting people that she saw doing complicated things in the Ringing World (like Lesley Boyle who was also on the panel). She is competitive by nature but had no concept of what good striking was for many years – she just used to aim to put her bell somewhere equidistant between the one that she could see / hear was in front of her and the one behind her.

Stephanie was really, really keen when she was young and was leading peal ringer in 1983 and 1984, the year she finished university at Sheffield. She is still the youngest woman to ring a thousand peals. She rang her 2000^th peal recently and that will probably be the slowest second thousand rung by a woman!  Over the years she has been lucky enough to be asked to ring a number of record peals that required “volume learning”, such as 170 spliced Maximus and 210 spliced Royal and, more recently, the first peal of “mythical beasts”, which is the hardest composition of 23 spliced major. She has also rung quite a few long lengths on the treble, including record lengths of all the work spliced surprise on 6, 8,10, 12 and 14. Other endurance feats include 4 peals of maximus in a day – all on biggish bells.

These days she is “super happy” just ringing the treble or Stedman Cinques– where there is absolutely nothing to think about other than trying to achieve fantastic striking. The rhythm of excellent ringing and the concentration takes her away to a happy place where nothing but perfection exists. It’s not all higher numbers stuff either for her – her husband is an expert in spliced surprise minor – so she has got quite proficient with that over the years and has recently been active in encouraging others to ring 41 spliced and 41 ATW for the first time. This year she rang 41 ATW silent and non-conducted and the tenor to a ladies peal of 147 minor.

She is proud to be the Conductor (Tower Captain) at St Martin’s in the Bullring – the only 16 bell tower in the UK.  Since she moved to Birmingham, she has been part of its 12 National Bell Contest band and now has 14 wins under her belt!

A fairly outgoing, confident character, she was the first female Master of the Ancient Society of College Youths and had a TV programme made about her attempt to lead the team to victory in the National 12 Bell Contest (unsuccessful but they did beat Birmingham!) and has been on Radio 4 talking about ringing and the Central Council – she guesses that’s the sort of thing that has led to her having been asked to be the ART Awards Leader (and a failure to “say no”)!

This entry was written in March 2020.