by Tony Smith

Those interested in the history of the Exercise may be aware that I maintain and develop part of my website as an archive mostly devoted to the Central Council material. The archive includes, amongst other things, minutes and reports of all the Council meetings and lists of officers, trustees, stewards and life members since the Council was formed in 1891.

I have recently added a new page showing all past and present committees of Council, their membership, conveners and/or chairmen (the revision of the rules in 1933 provided for the appointment of conveners, previously appointed informally, and the revision in 1971 replaced conveners by chairmen) and links to their annual reports. I have been contemplating this work item for some time but it was interest shown by the Biographies Committee last summer that provided the necessary incentive. The work involved extracting and collating over 3,400 pieces of information and some errors are probably inevitable. Nevertheless I hope it may be of interest and I would be pleased to receive any eMailed comments or corrections.

To access the new page either go to my archive home page www.methods.org.uk/archive (see Fig. 1 below) and click on Committees of the Council or go direct to www.methods.org.uk/archive/ctteemem.htm.

The Committees' page is then shown.

There is a drop-down menu at the top of the page that allows the selection of any committee, past or present. Current committees are shown in capital letters. In the example below the Tower Stewardship Committee is selected.

The chosen selection then shows past and present committee members and chairmen, with their dates of service.

There is a further drop-down menu at the top of the section which enables any of the annual reports to be selected.

The presentation of the committee reports in The Ringing World and, before 1911, the Bell News has varied considerably. Since 1996 the committee reports have accompanied the Annual Report of the Council. From 1972 to 1995 the committee reports formed part of the “Official Report” of the Council meeting and during the early years of Charlie Denyer’s time as RW Editor the committee reports were often spread over many issues.

The reports of officers, trustees and stewards are also available from drop-down menus above the lists of holders of those offices (click on the Officers of the Council or Trustees and Stewards of the Council links on the archive home page shown in Fig. 1).