Church Bells – ring out the old, ring in the new

Deeply rooted in our culture and heritage, church bells are the sound that welcomes in the New Year

Of all the symbols of the 12 days of Christmas – the holly, ivy and mistletoe; the wreaths, tree and decorations; the turkey and plum pudding – none is so synonymous with the spirit of goodwill, peace and joy, or more ancient, than the sound of church bells, summoning the faithful to celebrate the birth of Christ at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and to Matins on Christmas Day. The most symbolic and evocative of them all is the eerie peal of half-muffled bells ringing out the Old Year, ending with the great tenor bell solemnly tolling 12 times as the hour reaches midnight. There is a pause whilst the muffles are removed, then all the bells start again, a joyous, exuberant, cacophony welcoming the New Year, a glorious sound, full of power, hope and promise.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true. (Tennyson, 1850)

The sound of church bells has been deeply rooted in the culture and heritage of Britain for nearly 1,500 years, and almost everyone lives within hearing range of them. The association between bells and the church has its origin in the pagan belief that the sound of a bell ringing drove away evil and, like many pagan beliefs, the early Church conveniently converted it into a Christian practice. Handbells were used by early missionaries to summon people to worship and tolling bells were reputedly introduced to churches in AD400 by Paulinus, the bishop of Nola in Campania. The custom gradually spread across Europe, arriving in Britain towards the end of the sixth century. The abbeys of Wearmouth and Whitby are recorded as having bells in AD680 – the Venerable Bede mentions the bell tolling for the death of St Hilda, the founding abbess of Whitby Abbey, was heard 14 miles away at the monastery of Hackness. Ecgbert, Archbishop of York, issued instruction in AD750 that bells were to be rung for the canonical hours of devotion and St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, decreed that all churches in his diocese should have them.

Bells are made of bronze and by the Middle Ages every church had at least one, the wealthier cathedrals, abbeys and monasteries as many as six. Some of these were enormous – in 1316, Prior Henry of Eastry gifted a bell weighing 3½ tonnes to Canterbury Cathedral, dedicated to St Thomas Becket. Many bells were cast on site by itinerant artisans with a basic knowledge of smelting and mould making; others were craftsmen who set up permanent foundries. Peter de Weston and his successor, William Revell, were casting bells in their Aldgate foundry in the mid 1300s, with others in Durham, Salisbury, Gloucester, Reading, Norwich, Colchester, Wokingham and elsewhere attracting business from the surrounding countryside.

Early bells were hung from an axle or spindle to which a rope was attached, enabling the bell to be tolled. Where a church had multiple bells, these were rung in succession, producing a monotonous, discordant sound. The 15th and 16th centuries were a period of experimentation to make bells more controllable and mellifluous. Initially, a quarter wheel, then a half wheel and finally a whole wheel were attached to the spindle with the rope passed round a groove, so a bell could be swung through 360 degrees. As the bell reached the top of the pendulum, it could be paused momentarily and the time of its ringing controlled. With sufficient control, bells could be rung up and down the scale, from the lightest to the heaviest and vice versa, a bell-ringing practice known as ‘rounds’.

Secular pastime

Bell-ringing underwent a hiatus during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and Reformation, and in the reign of Elizabeth I only one bell was allowed to be rung as a summons to worship. Sundays were seen as a day of rest and entertainment. Bell-ringing for pleasure became a secular pastime, with little connection to the building in which the bells were hung. Bell-ringers were paid to ring for events of regional or national importance – in 1586, the bell ringers of St Margaret’s Westminster were paid a shilling each to ring at the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots. At the beginning of the 17th century, bellringing began to become standardised by the formation of bell-ringing companies, with rules similar to the London livery companies. Two of the oldest surviving companies are The Company of Ringers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, formalised in 1612, whose members ring the bells in Lincoln Cathedral today, and the Ancient Society of College Youths. Established in 1637 and based in the City of London, it provides ringers at important events in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

By now, bell-ringers had discovered that by changing the sequence in which bells were rung from the treble to the tenor, a distinctly musical effect was achieved and this method of ringing became increasingly popular. An important milestone in the early days of campanology and ‘change’ ringing as a science, was the publication in 1667 of Tintinnalogia, by Fabian Stedman and Richard Duckworth, which detailed “plain and easie Rules for Ringing all sorts of Plain Changes”. Stedman used mathematics to work out how bells of different weights could be rung in a series of permutations without any of the changes being repeated; for example, 720 continuous changes were feasible with a tower of six bells. The success of Tintinnalogia encouraged Stedman to write Campanalogia in 1677, which contained 53 new ringing methods using five, six, seven or eight bells, many of which are still popular today. To Stedman is owed the complex system that makes up a magnificent peal of bells, a ‘performance’ or ‘extent’ of 5,040 changes taking over three hours of uninterrupted ringing, where the bells are never sounded in the same order twice. The first peal of bells is believed to have been rung by the Society of College Youths in the church of St Sepulchrewithout-Newgate, Holborn, in January 1690, but the first documented peal was rung on seven bells in St Peter’s Mancroft, Norwich, in May 1715. The more bells, the greater the number of permutations. In 1756, to celebrate the birthday of the Duke of Cumberland, a continuous peal of 1,040 changes lasting 6½ hours, was rung on 10 bells in the church of St Laurence, Reading.

Rebel ringers

To the outrage of reputable bell-ringing societies, during the 18th and early 19th centuries bell-ringers, particularly in rural areas, gained a reputation for drunkenness and obstreperous behaviour, refusing to ring unless they felt like it. In 1832, the bell-ringers at All Saints in High Wycombe rang to celebrate the passing of the Reform Bill but refused to ring a few days later when the Bishop of Oxford paid his annual visit because they suspected him of voting against the bill. The relationship between the clergy and ringers became so bad that some incumbents tried locking bellringers out of the belfries, with the ringers responding by breaking in to what they considered their own personal domain.

The Victorian reforms of the Church of England enabled the clergy to take back control of the belfries and bell-ringing became realigned to Christian practices, with bell-ringers encouraged to be part of the congregation and appoint tower captains responsible for the attendance and general conduct of the ringers. Between 1851 and 1875, 2,438 churches were built or rebuilt and many bell towers refurbished, with bells recast and new bells added by foundries such as Taylor’s of Loughborough, Watson of Newcastle, Bush of Bristol, the Albion Foundry in Leeds or Mears of Aldgate.

Church of England reforms drove a resurgence of interest in bell-ringing, with societies and guilds formed all over the country. In 1891, Sir Arthur Heywood, the ‘Bell-ringing Baronet’, founded the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, an advisory body that acts as a coordinating organisation for education, publicity and codifying change-ringing rules worldwide. It provides advice on maintaining and restoring full circle bells and publishes The Ringing World, a weekly journal.

By the late 1800s, women began to take up bell-ringing. In February 1896, at the age of 19, the redoubtable Miss Alice White became the first woman to ring a full peal as part of a team of eight ringers at St Michael’s Church, Basingstoke. Such was the increasing popularity of change ringing among women that a Ladies’ Guild of Change Ringers was formed in 1912, the same year an all-women team of eight ringers rang a full peal at Christ Church, Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs.

Bell-ringing continued to go from strength to strength through the 1900s and in 1997 a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £3m went towards 150 separate bell restoration projects and a recruitment drive that attracted 5,000 new ringers, who learnt to ring in time to ring in the millennium. This is the largest national ringing event ever staged, when 95% of UK church bells rang together at noon on 1 January 2000. To signify the long heritage of bell-ringing, in 2012 a floating belfry with eight bells cast for the occasion by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, led The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant with a joyous peal. In 2017, in the run up to the nationwide events marking the centenary of the end of World War I, a campaign was launched to commemorate the 1,400 bell-ringers who died in the war by recruiting the same number of new ones, which exceeded expectations by attracting more than 1,700.

There are more than 5,000 bell towers in Britain and around 40,000 active bell-ringers of all ages and, apart from the Ladies’ Guild, 63 bell-ringing guilds, societies or associations are affiliated to the Central Council. Bell-ringing is social, fun and good exercise, both physically and mentally. Church congregations may be dwindling but the bells will always ring out on New Year’s Eve.

Ring culture

Bell-ringing The term which bell-ringers use to describe their art.

Campanology The term which non-ringers use to describe bell-ringing.

Peal A continuous sequence of more than 5,000 changes, which takes about three hours to ring.

Extent The maximum number of changes that may be rung on a given number of bells without repetition. On six bells (720 changes) it takes about 35 minutes to ring, while on 12 bells (479,001,600 changes) theoretically it would take 27 years.

Oldest bell for change-ringing Thought to be the fifth bell at St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury, Kent. It was cast in about 1325 by William le Belyetere, a local bell-founder.

Heaviest bell for change-ringing The tenor at Liverpool cathedral weighs just over four tons.

Big Ben Possibly Britain’s most famous bell. It was cast on 10 April, 1858 and weighs more than 13 tons.