This rather fiendish looking method - which I devised in February 2019 - has 360 changes in the plain course, and is therefore three times longer than a course of Surprise. The method was not a random creation.

 

The plain course of Cambridge S Minor is false to all out-of-course courses bar one: the course starting from 145326 (or its reversal, 154236). The same is the case with Oxford TB Minor. Why? Because all of the other out-of-course courses differ from the plain course by the swap of a single pair of bells, and in the plain course of Cambridge every possible pair of bells make places with each other at some point, entailing that any course in which those two pairs of bells are swapped over will be false.

 

But the course starting from 145326 does not differ from the plain course by the swap of a pair of bells. It is the only out-of-course course that does not run false against Cambridge's plain course, and you would get a true touch of 240 changes if you could join the two courses together.

 

If we dig deeper, we find that course 145326 is not any old course - it has a group relationship to the plain course. If you write out the 10 lead ends and lead heads from the plain course, and the 10 lead ends and lead heads from course 145326, the resulting 20 changes are a mathematical group, all relating to each other equally in the set. This 20-part group is well known in ringing, being used in peals of Stedman Triples by Thurstans' and others, including Thurstans' Masterpiece. John J B Lates was probably the first person to have used the group in ringing composition, with his peal of Stedman Triples in about 1842. I have also used the group for peals in Plain Triples methods, including Grandsire, Plain Bob, and Union.

 

Interestingly, the half leads in Cambridge Minor are the lead ends from the 145326 course rung upside down. This is why Ipswich S Minor - which has a 16 half lead instead of a 56 half lead - is a regular method, as the altered place notation has the same effect as a 16 lead end would (Primrose S Minor) due to the group relationship. It also means that if you ring the 145326 course to Cambridge, all of the half leads in that course are the regular lead ends rung upside down (Back Rounds, etc.)

 

There is no call that can directly join the plain course to the 145326 course in a single operation, because neither a bob nor a single affects four bells (which is the number of bells that differ between both courses.) So the touch of 240 Cambridge S Minor is unattainable, though true.

 

St Katharine Cree Treble Place Minor was designed as a way of expanding Cambridge threefold, so that the plain course is 360 changes long. The plain course and course 145326 therefore contain all 720 changes between them. You can see the similiarities that St Katharine Cree shares with Cambridge. The half leads and lead ends are exactly the same and occur in the same order. Some of the changes rung when the treble gets to a new dodging position are the same as the equivalent moment from Cambridge's plain course. To construct St Katharine Cree I had to carefully label all the coset types in advance and make sure that each of them was attained once and once only in the half lead. Though only 10 backstroke lead ends are rung, the group of 20 still prevails, for the 10 handstroke lead heads are the other members of the group, and each half lead is simply the preceding half lead rung in the opposite direction (as is the case with all palindromic methods).

 

The problem of not being able to join the 145326 course directly to the plain course is still there, so I incorporated these two courses within a 720 of Bob Minor to make a Spliced 1440 all-told, with the two courses of St Katharine Cree rung at the earliest possible opportunity. Ringing the 145326 course this way round, rather than starting from 154236, reduces the number of backstroke 65s to four. I also came up with a 5-part 1440, where St Katharine Cree is rung in individual leads rather than courses. I also produced a 14-course peal composition of St Katharine Cree on its own, with the aim of keeping the backstroke 65s as low as possible. The 14 courses are of course made up of 7 sets of partners based on the 123456 - 145326 relationship. I would think that the shortest true round block would be 2160 changes (6 courses), though perhaps there are shorter possibilities using incomplete courses.

 

Other features of the method. The treble's path isn't just symmetrical, but double too; if you turn the treble's blue line upside down, it would be the same. Indeed, the method is quite close to being double (as Cambridge is), with the place notation during the treble's position in 5-6 being a reflection of the notation during its position in 1-2 (the other parts of the lead do not stick to this rotational symmetry.) Apart from at the treble's lead end and half lead dodges, every 4th change is always place notation 12 in the first 2/3 of the lead, and 56 when the treble is in 5-6. This produces a constant and pleasing rhythmical effect. A search on CompLib for Minor methods containing 360 changes in their plan course yeilds only St Katharine Cree, so this method is possibly the first to have this feature. 360 changes - exactly half an extent - is rather pleasing, as Stedman Doubles also contains half the extent in its plain course.

 

In Feruary 2020 - almost exactly a year after I had devised the method - we named it in a quarter peal. A couple of days beforehand I came up with a 1260 that starts the same as the original 1440, reducing the Bob Minor to 540 changes. We rang this at the first attempt, so it was the first blows ever rung in the method. The method being a daunting prospect to learn and ring, I didn't quite know what to expect. But I neededn't have worried, as the band rang it superbly and confidently, with only a few very slight trips (the first one of which was made by me about 8 changes in!) Quite apart from the new method, it was also some of the best Bob Minor I've ever heard! I'm really grateful to them all for coming to ring it. Some methods with unusually long plain courses can be a bit boring to listen to, with the changes produced in seemingly random and 'flighty' ways. St Katharine Cree, however, has a nice structure which makes it enjoyable to listen to. When a band wants to name a new Minor method after their six-bell tower, the obvious options of 80+ years ago have long since been taken. That's why it was nice to be able to name a new Minor method of some distinction at the six-bell tower in which it was first rung.