The St. Mary’s, Walthamstow, Society was founded in 1874 by the existing band. Regrettably, the early records from this time have been lost so we have little knowledge of the ringers. Fortunately we do have the subsequent Minute Book that was started in 1909.
This provides us with the names of the ringers that were Full Members or Honorary Members and the rules that were revised at the first meeting in 1909. The first rule was “That the Society be named as heretofore, The Walthamstow Branch of the Ancient Society of College Youths”. Thus to attain Full Membership a ringer had to be a member of the College Youths, otherwise they could only be an Honorary Member. Practices at this time were held on Saturday evenings and were advertised as College Youth practices. This situation remained until 1920, when the rule requiring membership of the College Youths was rescinded.
During this period many famous ringers were on the list of members. These included Arthur Hughes, Albert Hughes and Leonard Hughes of Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Charles T Coles, and William D Smith. It was this period that produced three Masters of the College Youths from the members - Albert and Arthur Hughes and William D Smith.
Also very well known at the time, but probably unknown now, was the Maynard family - Robert J Maynard, his three sons, Robert W T, Henry Joseph and Frederick Clifton, and his brother Thomas. Additionally numerous famous ringers attended the practices regularly. These included such people as Matthew Wood, James Pettit and the Pye brothers.
