The Wedding of David Raggett to Ruth Parker

The wedding took place at All Saints Church, Deganwy, on the 6th October between David Raggett and Ruth Parker. David learnt to ring in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire where he quickly progressed to ring a number of quarters and peals.  During his apprenticeship with Npower he was stationed at Little Barford in Cambridgeshire and moved to Raunds in Northamptonshire where he played an active roll in local ringing.  It was here that he first met Ruth, both of them playing in the local church music group, Ruth the violin and David the guitar.



Three years ago David was offered a post at Dolgarrog hydro electric power station in North Wales, which he accepted and moved to Deganwy.  In the mean time Ruth was studying music at Liverpool University and continued to live in the city after her degree.  David soon found that it was not too far to travel between North Wales and Liverpool and so the relationship blossomed.  Ruth took time out to travel the world and not to be left out David had a couple of weeks off work before Christmas last year to fly out to meet her in Australia where he proposed to her.

David continued his ringing in North Wales but unfortunately his local church at Deganwy only has a set of six chiming bells, however he has found that he has time to ring for Sunday service at Llandudno before returning to Deganwy for their Sunday service and so has become a regular member of the Llandudno band.

To mark the day, a quarter peal of Yorkshire surprise major was planned at Llandudno by members of the family, friends from Yorkshire and a few local ringers prior to the wedding but unfortunately there was a slight break down in communications and only seven ringers turned up.  So we were in a bit of a dilemma, but realised that there was a ringer that David had helped in his time at Raunds, sitting in his car the other side of the road, and so he was grabbed and invited to ring the tenor to Bob Triples.  With a few nods and winks to assist the tenor a very respectable quarter of Bob Triples was scored.  It was only after the quarter that it emerged that Pete (the tenor man from Raunds) didn’t realise that he was being asked to ring a quarter, had not rung a bell for over six months and had never rung a quarter in his life before.  It was therefore a major achievement for Pete and very fitting that the quarter involved ringers from Tadcaster, Raunds and North Wales.

We were blessed with a wonderful day with perfect weather. Everything else went perfectly to plan and naturally the bells were rung at Deganwy both before and after the service.

The service was conducted by The Rev’d Pam Wright and there were four bridesmaids, three of the bride's sisters and a cousin.  The best man was the groom's eldest brother.  A reception was held at the Grand Hotel Llandudno following the wedding where a good time was had by all. 

Quarter Peal at Holy Trinity, Llandudno, 6th October 2007, rung to celebrate the wedding of David Raggett to Ruth Parker on this day.

1260 Plain Bob Triples,  1st Quarter peal 8

1)    Angie Spaven
2)    Martin Brown
3)    Stuart Raggett
4)    Tony Diserens
5)    James Gibb
6)    Thomas Raggett
7)    David Raggett (C.)
8)    Pete Wathen


Stuart R Raggett

Last updated: February 2008.  Archived: January 2016.