The George Williams Memorial Library is located in the ringing chamber of Winchester Cathedral and is available for readers and borrowers by appointment. The system for loans provides a standard loan period of eight weeks with a liberal renewal policy for serious research and special problems. The only exceptions are the archive material and the Guild’s annual and triennial reports for which, because of their unique importance, loans are solely at the discretion of the librarian. A catalogue of the printed books and of the complete archive is maintained on the Guild website. Part of our collection of archive material, held at the Hampshire Record Office in Sussex Street, Winchester, is available for consultation only. The collection there has the call-number 20M94.
Last year saw the arrival of several interesting donations. A framed membership certificate naming Walter George Horner has been forwarded to Yorktown where he was a member at the turn of the last century. The Eling band has had a sort-out of its working library and donated a number of older editions of the standard Central Council monographs, while the Alton band presented W.H. Thompson’s A Note on Grandsire Triples (1886). We received an interesting collection of general and background books on the exercise from Louise Allen of Hinton Admiral, including Tom Ingram’s Bells in England (1954) and H.B. Walters’ The Church Bells of England (1912, 1977 reprint). From David Strong we received a rare complete run of Les Cloches des Îles, the newsletter of the Channel Islands District. With the passing of Rex Corke has come the promise of further riches, on which I shall report next year. Finally, the Alton and Petersfield handed over six of their attendance and minute books from 1960 onwards.
Purchases comprised George Perrin’s The Craft of Bellringing and Ropesight on DVD, and John Harrison’s Living Heritage, a 300-year history of the bells and ringers of Wokingham.
The Guild’s online archive has the minutes of the Guild Annual meetings and Executive Committee meetings from 1980 to 2000 (More recent minutes are already available from the Guild’s Document Repository) and a collection of historical articles from The Ringing World about Guild people, places and events.
Andrew Barnsdale continues to hold recent volumes of The Ringing World which he is binding for the Guild Library, though I am budgeting in 2014 for binding of more recent years by a local bindery.
I am always pleased to assist Guild members and others with an interest in the Guild with their researches. I should like to thank my colleagues within the Guild and the Winchester Cathedral band for their continuing support.
| Income | Expenditure | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| £.p | £.p | ||
| Balance b/f | 57.90 | Sub. to The Ringing World | 59.00 |
| From the Central Fund | 300.00 | Sub. to The Friends of the Central Council Library | 10.00 |
| Harrison, Living Heritage | 7.00 | ||
| Perrin DVDs | 21.59 | ||
| Travel costs | 35.50 | ||
| Balance c/f | 224.81 | ||
| £357.90 | £357.90 | ||
Bruce Purvis