Ringing, or Change Ringing to give its full name, is a way of ringing bells to make each bell strike in a particular sequence. This way of ringing bells developed in England in the 17th century, and is different to most of the world, where they are partially swung and strike in no set order. In Change Ringing, the bells are swung 360 degrees, from mouth-up to mouth-up position. The bell is controlled by a rope, which drops down into a separate room further down the tower so that the ringers don’t get deafened. One person controls one bell, so ringing requires working in a team of other ringers.
Controlling a bell
The motion of a bell. Credit to OUSCR
By briefly balancing the bell when it is mouth-up, we can control when the bell strikes, and with the other ringers we can put the bells in a given order, called a ‘Row’. All the bells are numbered; in a tower of 8 bells, the highest-pitched is 1, the second highest-pitched is 2, all the way to the deepest-pitched being 8. The most basic Row is to strike the bells in order: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, but a Row can be any order where each bell strikes only once. Some specific Rows have names because they create a particularly nice sound or pattern, like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, which is called ‘Rounds’, or 1 3 5 7 2 4 6 8, called ‘Queens’.
The number of possible ways in which 8 bells can be ordered is surprisingly large. There are 40,320 unique permutations, which gives us a lot of room for moving the bells about into whatever order we would like.
Methods
In Change Ringing, we have a kind of musical notation called a method diagram. This shows a ‘method’ which, starting with Rounds, is a list of specific Rows written sequentially, eventually finishing with Rounds again. The way that the bells change order from one Row to the next is called a ‘Change’.
Diagrams also include a blue line showing how a particular bell moves from one Row to another. This blue line is also useful for showing your bell’s position relative to the other bells. Each method has a different and unique sequence of Rows, and consequently a differently shaped blue line. Because of the huge number of possible permutations you can get for 8 bells, there are many ways to string different Rows together, and so there are thousands of unique methods.
By memorising the blue line of a particular method, how it indicates your bell’s position within each Row and how you change position from Row to Row, we can ring these methods from memory. The aim of ringing is to ring these methods well, trying not to make mistakes and maintaining even and regular striking. It is a good challenge for the brain, and can only be done well by working as a team with the other bellringers. Because of this, it is an immensely rewarding activity.
The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers (CCCBR) has published a promotional video, showing what people enjoy about ringing.
If you’d like to learn more, visit their website here: https://cccbr.org.uk/