Bells are rung for many reasons, including: to announce the beginning of a church service; to celebrate a marriage; to mark a person’s death; to mark a particular achievement; and, to commemorate a sad event.

Bells may be rung “Half-Muffled” to mark a sad occasion, or, very rarely, even “Fully-Muffled”. Muffling a bell involves strapping a piece of leather on one or both sides of the clapper which strikes the bell. Bells would normally only be rung fully-muffled on the death of the monarch. Bells are normally rung “Open” (without muffles).

Here are some examples of the bells at Nantwich being rung in various ways for various reasons.

To Celebrate the Life of a King

Here is an extract from a peal rung on Saturday 15 October 2016 to commemorate the life and works of King Edward the Confessor. The method rung was Westminster Abbey Surprise Major and the peal took 3 hours. Edward was the founder of the first Abbey of Westminster and the peal was rung in the 950th year of his death. A notice publicising the peal attempt can be seen by clicking here, and a record of the successful performance was published here.

All eight bells are being rung open fairly confidently (the recording was made part way through the peal when the band had settled down). If you listen carefully, you will notice a small pause after every two rows (16 blows), this is called the “Handstroke Gap” and it helps give structure to the sound of the ringing.

To Commemorate the Casualties of Passchendaele

Here is an extract from a peal rung on Armistice Day 2017 to commemorate the sacrifice made by those who died in the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in 1917. A record of the performance was published here.

Whilst all eight bells are being rung, the method, Grandsire Triples, only involves the first seven bells; the eighth and heaviest bell, the tenor, always rings last in each row. The peal was rung with all the bells fully-muffled except the tenor which was left open at backstroke. As the tenor is always last in each row, you will hear it strike open just before the handstroke gap (see above) giving the effect of slow tolling which seemed appropriate given the reason for the peal being rung.

Call Changes from Inside the Ringing Chamber

Call Changes (or Called Changes) is a long-standing way of producing a set of different sequences of bells by one of the ringers (the “conductor” or “caller”) instructing, from time to time, pairs of ringers to swap the position their bells are sounding in the current sequence. For mainly mechanical reasons, the two bells swapped at a call are [almost invariably] adjacent in the sequence. Some sequences of bells are given names e.g. Queens, Whittington’s, and Tittums (generally because they are deemed to be more musical than others). Rounds (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 on 8 bells) is perhaps the most commonly rung sequence as it is the normal starting point for most pieces of ringing. Queens (1-3-5-7-2-4-6-8) is very popular for including in wedding ringing (we can argue about the apostrophe at another time). The following recording was made from inside the ringing chamber whilst the bells were being rung for a wedding on Saturday 14 September 2019.

In this recording, you will hear some noises other than the bells. There are some sounds produced by the ropes passing through the ceiling and rope guides, and, hopefully more interestingly, you will hear the conductor “calling the changes”. The call “6 to 2” at 25 seconds into the recording brings up Tittums (1-5-2-6-3-7-4-8) a few moments later; the call “2 to 7” at 1 minute 17 seconds is not heard by one of the ringers and you will hear clipping (two bells striking at the same time) a few moments later followed by the instruction being re-called and then the change being fully effected; Queens comes up at the 1 minute 50 second mark.

Ringing during the Covid-19 Pandemic

When the ringers were allowed to perform again during the Covid-19 pandemic, they were not able to ring all the bells together, and those they were able to ring could not all be consecutive in the musical scale, in order to maintain a safe distance between the ringers. Here is a short recording of five bells (2, 3, 5, 6, and 8) being rung for Evensong on Sunday 23 August 2020.

The ringers are ringing Call Changes (see above), if you listen carefully you will hear the effect of such calls occurring at the 17th second and the 32nd second of the recording. You will also note that the ringing sounds slower to that of other recordings on this page, however, the bells are not actually being rung slower individually; the bells are being spaced out more as there are fewer being rung.

Settling Down at the Beginning of a Piece of Ringing

Most bells have some slight differences in when they strike relative to when they are pulled at each stroke (hand and back) and bells of different weights ring at different intervals after being pulled. This recording was made right at the start of a peal which included ringers from elsewhere in Cheshire. It begins with Rounds which starts hesitantly and then improves as each ringer adapts when they pull their bell to make it strike in the right place in the sequence.

After 40 seconds of Rounds, the conductor of the peal has judged the ringing to have settled down sufficiently to call the instruction “Go Superlative!” The peal starts fairly well but there are still a few hesitancies and a few rushed handstroke gaps as the ringers get to hear how their bells sound when rung in amongst the others and make ongoing corrections to their ringing; at 1 minute 9 seconds into the recording, about 15 minutes has been cut out (you will hear a momentary gap) and you will then hear that the ringing has settled down (it is fractionally faster, more confident, and the handstroke gaps are more even).

Incidentally, the peal was rung to celebrate various ordinations and appointments, including that of Rev Canon Dr Barry Wilson as Residentiary Canon at Chester Cathedral, and it started a bit late and actually finished 6 minutes into Barry’s last service as Rector at Nantwich (on Sunday 30 July 2017) so perhaps the ringers can be forgiven the initial hesitancy! A record of the peal was published here.

Firing from Inside the Ringing Chamber

“Firing” is the term used when all the bells are purposely rung simultaneously and should not be confused with the term “firing out” (which is used to describe when a piece of ringing fails due to too many concurrent mistakes resulting in some or all the bells being heard to clash together randomly). Firing bells is another way of marking a significant occasion e.g. a wedding, however it is not performed very often these days and takes quite a bit of practice to get right. This recording of the bells at Nantwich being fired was made from within the ringing chamber after the bells had been rung normally for a wedding (see above).

You will hear the treble ringer calling “Look to! Treble’s Going! [She’s] Gone!” and the bells being rung in Rounds. The conductor (who happened to be the treble ringer) then calls “Look to the Tenor, next Handstroke!” to instruct each ringer to ring simultaneously with the Tenor ringer (who has to keep going at the same rhythm or it all collapses!). You will notice that the third bell is slightly early for the first two blows and then late for another (there’s nowhere to hide in Firing!) before the ringing settles down into some quite nice firing. The call “Rounds next Handstroke!” instructs the ringers to finish firing and resume ringing rounds. Resuming rounds after firing is quite hard for the smaller bells as they have to ring really fast for a blow to get back into rounds, so it takes a couple of blows for the rounds to settle down; the conductor then calls “Stand Next!” to stop the ringing. Considering that we rarely practise firing at Nantwich and some of the ringers had probably only tried it once or twice before, this piece of ringing was really well performed and a nice addition to the ringing for the wedding.

Revisions:

09/10/2020	Initial publication.
22/02/2021	Minor typographical changes.