About ten years ago I was given the opportunity to interview the Captain and team responsible for the lovely sound I’m hearing at the moment. Before I went up the stairs to the tower I hadn’t known the correct term for the people involved. I knew the term campanologist and had done some background work but it turned out to be a whole new world up there.
For a start there is a Captain in charge of the bell ringing team and is usually one of the more experienced members. In this particular church there is a dedicated band of bell-ringers made up of people with many levels of expertise and experience, who all give their time and talent on an entirely voluntary basis to ring for services.
They ring the bells in what is called change ringing which was invented in the 1500s. This style of bell-ringing is a mix of mild exercise, team-work, and mental challenges. They currently have 21 members ranging in age from teenagers to over 80.
To give a flavour of this typical older church here is a brief history:
First mention of bells at ...is in the Inventory of Church Goods (1552), which credits the Church with “thre bells…ij sacring bells”. Sacring bells were - and in many church still are - used during the Communion service. But the two that were at ...were probably little used after the reformation and in 1636 seem to have been given to the Minister as payment for looking after the Church clock.
First mention of bells at ...is in the Inventory of Church Goods (1552), which credits the Church with “thre bells…ij sacring bells”. Sacring bells were - and in many church still are - used during the Communion service. But the two that were at ...were probably little used after the reformation and in 1636 seem to have been given to the Minister as payment for looking after the Church clock.
In 1712 there were four bells in the tower. They were than recast into a ring of five...The five new bells were hung in a frame with space for another bell to be added later...The additional bell arrived in 1858.
The frame was strengthened and enlarged in 1926. One bell was recast, the other five retuned, and two more added to make an octave. These operations were carried out by the Whitechapel foundry, who also hung the bells on ball bearings to make ringing easier. The same foundry recast the entire octave in 1965, so that the Church continues to have a ring of bells that measure up to the glowing reputation that the bells have had since the 18th century.
I mentioned Change Ringing above and this where it gets a bit complicated. It has been described as both an art and a science, the former referring to the handling and control of the moving bell via a rope, and the latter to learning “method” ringing – the production of “bell music”.
This type of bell ringing originated in England in the 16th and 17th century when church bells were first fitted with a full wheel and swung until balanced upside down (see diagram above). The bells are swung 360° using a rope with one ringer per bell. The rope runs round the wheel and hangs down into the ringing chamber below. Each rope has a coloured woolly part called a sally which is where the ringer catches the rope. Using the rope the ringer can control the timing of their bell. This allows the sequence in which the bells ring to be altered and, with practice, continuously evolving sequences of bells to be rung.
The Captain showed me one of the patterns they use and it was baffling (see the image below). The maximum number of different changes that can be rung on five bells is 120, on six bells it is 720, on seven 5,040 and on eight is 40,320. The term Peal which is where more than 5000 changes are rung. This takes, on average, about 3½ hours to ring. Also Quarter Peals are rung regularly which consist of at least 1250 changes and takes 50-55 minutes.
If you’re interested in becoming a Bell Ringer there is the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers which is the representative body for all who ring bells in the English tradition with rope and wheel. You can find them at https://cccbr.org.uk.
By the way, and completely irrelevant to the above, I’m addicted to the Golden Age of detective fiction in the UK. One of the best writers was Dorothy L. Sayers and one of her best books was The Nine Tailors. If you read the book there is actually a point to that statement.
Inscriptions For A Peal of Eight Bells After a Restoration
I Thomas Tremble new-made me
Eighteen hundred and fifty-three
Why he did I fail to see.
II I was well-toned by William Brine
Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine
Now recast, I weakly whine!
III Fifteen hundred used to be
My date, but since they melted me
’Tis only eighteen fifty-three
IV Henry Hopkins got me made
And I summon folk as bade
Not to much purpose, I’m afraid!
V I, likewise, for I bang and bid
In commoner metal than I did
Some of me being stolen and hid.
VI I, too, since in a mould they flung me
Drained my silver, and rehung me
So that in tin-like tones I tongue me
VII In nineteen hundred, so ’tis said,
They cut my canon off my head
And made me look scalped, scraped and dead.
VIII I’m the peal’s tenor still, but rue it!
Once it took two to swing me through it.
Now I’m rehung, one dolt can do it.
Thomas Hardy ('Human Shows...' 1925)
I Thomas Tremble new-made me
Eighteen hundred and fifty-three
Why he did I fail to see.
II I was well-toned by William Brine
Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine
Now recast, I weakly whine!
III Fifteen hundred used to be
My date, but since they melted me
’Tis only eighteen fifty-three
IV Henry Hopkins got me made
And I summon folk as bade
Not to much purpose, I’m afraid!
V I, likewise, for I bang and bid
In commoner metal than I did
Some of me being stolen and hid.
VI I, too, since in a mould they flung me
Drained my silver, and rehung me
So that in tin-like tones I tongue me
VII In nineteen hundred, so ’tis said,
They cut my canon off my head
And made me look scalped, scraped and dead.
VIII I’m the peal’s tenor still, but rue it!
Once it took two to swing me through it.
Now I’m rehung, one dolt can do it.
Thomas Hardy ('Human Shows...' 1925)
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment. Terry Q.
4 comments:
I lived across from a parish church for a short time in my early teens. I would wake up to the Call to Worship bells on Sunday mornings and it was lovely. It was a nice time of year, spring into summer. I hated the relocation at the time, but look upon the memory with some fondness now. I enjoyed reading your blog . There's so much more to bell-ringing than I realised. The wedding bells I remember being joyful and higher pitched than Sunday morning and it was a perfect setting for those who got married there. Good choice of poem, too.
Fascinating stuff! And what a completely apt and complementary poem to round it off
I love the sound of church bells of a summer evening. I didn't realise that playing them was so complicated. I thought the hardest thing to do was keep your feet on the floor. It's an interesting poem, bells telling their tales.
Most instructive, Terry. I agree that hearing church bells ringing the changes is a most delightful sound, and one that I enjoyed in the town where I lived before moving up to Blackpool. It's all seagulls and ambulance sirens for me now!
MY ex-wife apparently has taken up bell-ringing somewhere in Devon. I should have read the book!
Thomas Hardy's poem is rather splendid.
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