Ringing Forums

I don’t know how many of you have followed the link and completed the survey, but as ringers we are often too focussed on our own perspective. At this stage it is a consultation about what categories of intangible rather than tangible heritage should be included.The Convention text groups Intangible Cultural Heritage into 5 categories or “domains”:

• oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;
• performing arts;
• social practices, rituals and festive events;
• knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;
• traditional craftsmanship

The following additional categories are also being consulted about.

• traditional games and sports; and
• culinary traditions / knowledge.

To be listed, itangible cultural heritage needs to be something that is currently practiced and recognised by the wider community. Therefore, things such as the ringing of bells to mark the new year would seem to qualify quite easily.

A while ago I attended a Heritage Lottery Fund seminar for applicants, and one of the other applicants there was a group promoting Caribbean Cookery. As a bellringer this might seem a little odd, and not heritage in the same that restoring a set of bells is. However, by participating in the seminar I came to realise that those who came across on the Empire Windrush had brought their culture with them, and several generations later it is now established as one of the UK’s diverse cultural traditions.

Therefore, it is important that we as ringers do not stay out of sight in our church towers, in our own little world, but engage with the wider community in every way that we can. Otherwise, we will lose out.

I was a member of the CCCBR’s Ringing Centres Committee for quite a long time. I saw quite a few proposals to establish new ringing centres, but these were often focussed on doing something with a particular ring of bells, rather than a well thought out plan to recruit and train new ringers. There are many towers out there which with just a little investment would make ideal teaching towers, rather than undertake an ambitious project elsewhere.

We also have a problem in the exercise that many Guilds and Associations have been focussed on hardware projects for the last five or six decades, but so many rings of bells have been restored, and with modern fittings they now need less maintenance going forward. The need for new rings of bells and augmentations is also not top of most PCC’s list of priorities. Therefore, we need to review our priorities.

With much bell restoration fund money invested in short term deposit accounts, and losing value through inflation, we could invest that money far more effectively in people projects. A typical grant of £10k spent on one major bell restoration project at one tower, would go a long way to helping to regenerate local bands at sevral towers.

If members see a large balance in the BRF they have less incentive to raise funds for it. With property prices where they are, in recent years several Guilds and Associations have also received large windfall bequests, far more than they know what to do with.

The CofE has a dilemma. It needs to attract younger people, but it cannot afford to upset the older members of its congregations. It also has a large number of buildings which are inflexible, not situated in ideal locations and expensive to insure, heat and maintain.

In our local Deanery we have a ring of three in a small village. Five years ago, they were augmented to six, but there is only one service a month. The benefice has two other village churches with ring of bells, but since Covid there are just two ringers left in the benefice, and they don’t have the time or energy to train a new band.

A neighbouring benefice has four churches, two with bells. One of these is a ring of five which were installed fifteen years ago in an empty tower. This is now a ‘festival’ church with a handful of services each year. The Christmas service is at 8am, and the church has no churchwardens.

Another benefice also has two towers with bells and they too both have difficulties filling churchwarden and PCC vacancies. One of these churches is also now also a ‘festival’ church.

Evensong is now almost non-existent at any church in our Deanery, having been replaced at the larger churches with family orientated teatime gatherings.

One thing is certain, we cannot expect ringing to continue the way it has continued over recent decades. We cannot restore every ring bells and add more. We need to recognise the realities adapt. We have significant resources at our disposal and as ‘Ring for the King’ has shown, an activity which many members of the public are willing to participate in, and these new people are needed to help address our own demographic challenges and preserve the exercise.

PS Talking to Annie Hall, Secretary of the Coventry Diocesan Guild earlier about another matter, I learnt that investment of a large bequest that they had received a few years ago is managed by the Diocese and held in long term investments. As a result of the income that this generates, the Guild BRF is now offering grants of up to 50% to major projects.

The open day in aid of Ropley was an excellent well managed event, and showed just how generous the ringing community can be, not just financially but also in terms of their time and energy taken to organise it. However, it was in aid of a specific project.

Much has changed over the last 50 years since many of our Society BRF’s were established. Thanks to many decades of fundraising and much volunteer labour, there are now far fewer unringable towers, and many rings now hang in modern frames, with modern fittings, which are far less expensive to maintain.
We often hear calls to raise more money for Society BRF’s, but in recent decades money has generally been coming in faster than it is spent. The surplus is often invested short term deposit accounts such as the CofE CBF Deposit Fund. In 1995-7 a CCCBR survey showed that there were about 5.3 years’ worth of reserves held in Society BRF’s. Nowadays this has doubled to about 10.6 years’ worth of reserves.
Taking figures from CBF’s factsheet, If a BRF constantly had £50k invested in that fund over the last ten years it would have grown to £54,160. However, to match the CPI measure of inflation over the same period, it would need to grow to £66,600, so there would have been a loss of £12,440 in purchasing power.

I know that some will argue about which is the most relevant measure of inflation, and investment in short term deposit accounts may have been appropriate when there was a faster turnaround. However, the point is that when members see their money held in the BRF for a long period of time before is spent, and it depreciates as it is held in short term deposit accounts, will they contribute more? In real terms, members are donating less than they did a few decades ago. Martin Lewis would not be impressed!

CCLA, which manages the CBF Deposit Fund on behalf of the CofE, offers actively managed longer term investment funds for the CofE and other charities. It is recommended that these are held for a minimum term of five years, and they have a target of beating CPI inflation. The COIF Charities Investment Fund has reported an annualised return (increased on average each year) of 9.44% over the last ten years. Over this period, it has beaten its target of matching CPI + 4% to produce an annualised return of CPI + 6.68%, significantly enhancing the purchasing power of the money invested.

The Oxford Diocesan Guild Bell Fund has been investing money not needed for the next three years in a basket of longer-term investments, based on advice from their Diocesan financial adviser, for many years. Consequently, it has accumulated a large investment fund, the income from which now helps the fund to offer grants of 20% of the cost of eligible works. If only more societies did the same, they could generate far more money to spend on their bell restoration projects. Alternatively, they could invest more money on more welcoming ringing environments and towers where ringing can thrive, as Robin Shipp and Simon Linford argue in the Ringing 2030 thread. Or they could do a mix of both.

https://www.ccla.co.uk/investments/investor/charities-and-churches

I don’t know whether London is unusual but there are very few towers here which focus heavily on called changes, most are looking to get people to cover and then plain hunt and then treble and then ring methods inside and this is definitely harder if there are less steady support ringers than progressing ringers at a practice night but I can’t think of a practice night which spends more time on called changes than methods. — Lucy Chandhial

There are plenty of opportunities in Central London and many in the inner suburbs too, but again you have to travel. I think, as Lucy suggested further up the thread, that older learners (as with younger learners) need to be encouraged to engage with other bands in their local areas from an early stage. — Tristan Lockheart

Looking to the future, a culture of travel will need to be normalised if ringing is to remain sustainable; — Tristan Lockheart

Let me add a different perspective here. I learnt in rural Gloucestershire as a teenager, then spent 40 years in London and the past five years retired in rural Hampshire.

Throughout the 1970’s between 20% and 25% of the local G&B branch membership were junior members. We could easily have entered a branch team in the NWRC if it existed then, as could many other branches/districts. There were plenty of opportunities to progress as the difference between the top end and the bottom end of ringing was far less. Through contact made at branch meetings and practices, conductors (who were not much older than us) would invite us into peal and quarter peal attempts. These were often in plain methods. Three of my first peals were of plain bob minor, the fourth was of grandsire doubles. I had to ring three more before ringing one of Surprise Major.

In the 1980’s the MCA&LDG had four active Districts. The London County Association was also very active. The MCA&LDG now has just two larger districts and the LCA needed to be wound up in the 1990’s. It attracted the many young ready-made ringers moving to London, but that supply slowed to a trickle. We now have a situation where there are fewer local bands, and as public transport in London is so easy, people gravitate to where the best ringing is.

There are a substantial number of towers where there are no regular local practices, with the bells kept ringing by a band based at another tower. Whilst there may be enough support ringers now in order to fast track a limited number of learners on to methods quickly, that is not sustainable in the long term.

The one factor that determines whether a local band is an active one is the presence of a couple of people who between them have the skills needed to run a successful band They can take over an otherwise silent tower and soon build up an active band. Conversely, I have seen quite a few local surprise bands collapse completely when a few key individuals move away.

The weekday evening ‘after work’ peal bands are far less active, their members now being retired meet up on weekdays in the countryside instead. Generally, they are also now far more risk averse, so don’t provide the opportunities to bring on large numbers of new ringers in the way that they used to.

Locally, in the Hampshire countryside we have recruited and taught quite a few new ringers since Covid. Many are early retired or working from home, and although many are mature learners, I’m pretty sure that many of them will be ringing Grandsire Triples and Bob Major inside in a couple of years’ time. The limiting factor is the availability of helpers to fill in, as many of the more experienced ringers are older than me and are less enthusiastic than they used to be. Infirmity is also creeping up on them..

However, once we have got our new ringers to ringing Grandsire and Plain Bob, and having put all the hard work in, we wouldn’t want to see the more able ones travel and join another band in order to learn to ring even more advanced methods. That can’t be sustainable, especially if those bands haven’t put the hard work in. It will just reinforce a two-tier system or downward spiral which towers cannot escape from. I don’t mind the new ringers taking opportunities to progress, by ringing with others in the District or Guild, but they also need to remain members of the local band in order to help the others on the lower rungs of the ladder. That way the band as a whole will progress further.

Nor does my local band wish to see our practices over-run by learners from other towers, especially when we may have to invest time in re-teaching some of them to handle, or some of the other basic skills needed to ring simple methods successfully. We support the neighbouring practices where the bands are at the call-changes/kaleidoscope stage, as they have an important role to play in teaching the foundation skills well.

So what would I do differently at a national level?

There needs to be far more emphasis on developing bands, and less on individual advancement. Far more leadership training will help.

The Hereford Ringing course model has been around for about 50 years, but is it the right one in today’s circumstances? The new learners are willing to pay, and that is part of the solution, but the elementary levels on the recent North-West Ringing course were three times over-subscribed. The more advanced groups had roughly the same number of applications as places available. Finding sufficient helpers of the right quality has also always been a problem.

The Essex course model, where the opportunity is now being taken to train new teachers and spread good teaching practice, has the potential to have a far more lasting impact, rather than just trying to teach other people’s learners for them. Smaller local courses are far easier to organise, so long as they are held frequently, rather than the typical annual training day.

We also need to be realistic about the scale of action needed, and ensure that sufficient resources are mobilised. Over the last ten years the Birmingham School of ringing has taught 250 new ringers. If we are to teach 15,000 new ringers between now and 2030 we will need far more schools like this, not just 30 or 40 ringing centres or teaching hubs and a couple of extra residential courses. To end up with 15,000 new ringers in 2030 you will need to recruit and start teaching around 30,000 people. That’s over 4,000 per annum.

There were difficulties in many areas coping with Ring for the King enquiries, but we will need to do more than that every year between now and 2030. We’re going to need something like 200 hubs/centres of a similar scale to Birmingham, with a sufficiently large pool of teachers and helpers. That’s almost one per District/Branch, more if they are on a smaller scale in the rural areas, and those areas where the supply of the necessary helpers is the weakest.

I agree that some "just one student at a time" is needed, but it really does cut down on each student's ringing time. It also results in what some residential courses complain about - the same students coming back and doing the same thing year after year (as they can ring whatever it is ONLY when surrounded by good ringers — David Smith

It was also my experience as a group leader on the Surrey Association training days in the 1990's and 2000's. These were held twice a year, and the same strudents came back time after time. They didn't get the support in their local towers, and reverted to their bad habits. We did hold tower captain's training days, but few tower captains attended.

At Alresford we have ten new 'Ring to the King' ringers at the moment, who are all very keen, and just starting to pain hunt. This requires a far geater degree of bell control, and other skills, than are needed to ring call-changes. If we had tried the traditional approach of 'one in at a time' to plain hunt, it would be very slow, the new ringers would only have got a couple of goes each evening, and our experienced ringers would have become very bored too!

Therefore we have used all the exercises in the Learning the Ropes foundation skills toolbox (whole pull and stand, set after a variable number of strokes, kaleidoscope places and dodges, mexican wave, switch-a-roo, moving anticlockwise round the circle to ring all the bells in the tower, ring facing out the circle etc.) We don't need very many helpers to do this and the students get a lot of rope time, so they are making rapid progress. They also enjoy doing all these exercises.

If only we could spread the word and get more towers, Guild and Association trainiing days (and residential couses) to do the same!

Going back to the original question, have you ever played in an orchestra or a brass band, or sung in a choir.? If so, you will realise that what you are able to play or sing is dependent on the least able members of the group. Joining another orchestra, band or choir to play or sing more advanced music may work for you, but unless you stay to help the others, you will be letting them down. Despite having invested a lot of their time in teaching you, they will be stuck or go backwards.

The same is true in ringing. It’s a team activity, not an individual one, and we need to teach smarter.

Rather than the old way, we need to focus on teaching core skills such as advanced bell control and the three speeds of ringing, listening skills and understanding the concept of place in a row, right from the outset. Otherwise, it takes far longer to acquire these skills if people become accustomed to not needing them, or once bad habits become ingrained.

We too have a lot of new ringers, and we have found the techniques in the ART Module 2F syllabus invaluable. Rather than ring endless call-changes and plain hunt by numbers, we have used exercises such as whole pull and stand, setting after a number of strokes (decided by throwing a large furry dice) kaleidoscope places and dodges, Mexican wave, ringing twinkle twinkle little star, switching from rounds to backward rounds and back again, moving people round the circle to ring different bells, ringing facing out of the circle and teaching people how to call call-call changes. We have found these exercises invaluable.

We use a previously silent neighbouring tower for our Monday evening beginners practices, which are very popular. Everyone enjoys themselves and there is a good team spirit. We’ve even needed to discourage some of our experienced ringers from coming along to help, as you don’t need very many experienced ringers to run these sessions. This gives the new ringers far more rope time, which is what they need, and it retains their interest.

This also has the benefit of relieving the experienced ringers of the tedium of endless call changes and plain hunt. Having mastered the key skills at the beginners practices, the new ringers are also now able to join in the Friday night practices and make far more rapid progress than they would if they had followed the few minutes of call-changes and plain hunt by numbers each week pathway.

We are able to recruit elsewhere in the District without a problem, and we have not wasted time trying to save the bands that are reluctant to engage with us. It's just a shame that these villages are just the same as the others where we have plenty of recruits. We've noticed that RFK enquiries passed on to these bands are either not followed up, or there is a very high drop out rate compared with elsewhere. When these bands cease to exist, hopefully some of our enthusiastic ringers can step in a recruit and train up a new band.

I would also argue that before embarking on another national PR and recruitment campaign, we first need to carry out an internal PR campaign to make sure that any influx of new recruits can be handled properly. It's interesting that ART has received around 2,000 RFK enquiries in recent months, and although the number of fresh enquiries has slowed right down, there are now a significant number coming back to ART asking if there is somewhere else where they can be taught to ring. They are keen to learn but only making very slow progress at the tower where they are learning.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld there are”… known unknowns an unknown unknowns”. Any contractual arrangement involves allocating risks between the client and contractor, and in my 40+ years of experience the term ‘fixed price contract’ is a misnomer.

For example, a bell project that I am currently involved with involves a ring where the church was gutted by fire. Two of the bells were cracked, but the other four are OK, although they need to be annealed (heated up and cooled back down) so that there are no stresses left in the metal induced by the fire. Some of the bellhangers had quoted for re-tuning the bells after annealing, others had not. We therefore included a ‘Provisional Sum’ for this known unknown in our analysis and budget, so that we could compare all the quotes on a like for like basis.

It was quite interesting when we compared all the quotes on a like for like basis. All the companies had similar cost structures, so there was not much difference in the final bottom line. Had we simply accepted the lowest quote we might have been approached for an extra once the bells had been annealed, but we now have this risk mitigated.

On previous projects that I have been involved with there have been various unknown unknows that have surfaced, although beforehand we have tried to eliminate them by spending a little money up-front to carry out some investigations and tests. One tower suffered tower sway and rather than just risk proceeding with the cheapest, we employed a well-known ringing Structural Engineer to advise on the best technical solution. Many other towers have metal frames, but the older ones were often painted with lead-based paint. Therefore, I would recommend that paint samples be taken and analysed, rather than going ahead and finding out later. Similarly, foundation beams embedded in tower walls can suffer hidden corrosion or rot, which to the un-trained eye might otherwise only become apparent once work commenced. If the church electrical installation is being used for the hoists, has it been inspected and tested recently? is it adequate for the load and safe to use? Are sockets nearby? Is lighting adequate?

Also, do look carefully at the exclusions in any quote and make sure that they are properly costed in, especially where there are demarcation lines. Does the clock specialist just connect up the hammers, or is he expected to modify the hammers as well?

Contingencies are there to cover the unforeseeable, but being thorough and taking a view on what is covered by provisional sums, and the risk of them being required, you can allow a reasonable level of contingency. Typically, this might range from 5% from a very straightforward project to 10% or even 15% for a very complex one.

If you have got some magical way to attract demand, then please share. — J Martin Rushton

In my experience it's not too difficult to find new ringers. There's some very useful recruitment advice on the Association of Ringing Teachers website: https://ringingteachers.org/resources/recruitment-and-retention

The Central Council's Volunteer and Leadership Workgroup have also developed a very good ten-point plan and there is a video about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-egnSnol7k&t=220s

Of course, asking for £100 may put some off, but there are ways round this and a different charging structure could be adopted. However ringing is generally well out of date in its attitude to money and what people would be willing to pay. If only we charged a little more we would be able to do far more.

I've just done a quick google search to see what it would cost to take up one of the alternatives to bellringing.

Swimming lessons
Start Mon 9th Jan 2023
£55 per month

After school soccer club - School Year: 2
Tuesday's - 15.30-16:30
From January 3, 2023 to March 28, 2023
Price: £49.50

Music Lessons
From £13.93 for a 20 minute lesson to £27.76 for a 40 minute lesson. £9.25 for a single group lesson.

Girlguiding
The annual subscription amount is set by HQ. This goes towards running Girlguiding nationally. In 2023 this will be £28 per member. In addition amounts, known as levies, are set by the district, division, county and country or region. This helps with local running costs. As it’s set locally, this amount will be different for different units and levels. Each member pays a total of these two amounts as their annual subs. There are extra charges for uniform, special activities, camps and events.

Scouts
Subscription costs are £135 of which £36.00 per annum is the HQ fee. There are additional costs for activities and uniform.

Insofar as it relates to ringing, we have to be prepared for a considerable reduction in the number of towers. What are the implications of considerably fewer towers for recruitment and retention? Where are the opportunities for relocated rings of bells, or will many be lost? — Tristan Lockheart

The problem is that we have significantly more bells than ringers, and there is a mismatch between where the towers are and where the ringers are. I’m not so sure that we will see a considerable reduction in the number of towers, instead we are likely to see the bells and towers retained, albeit that service frequency will be reduced to one or two a month, or even half a dozen a year.

Consequently, many bands in the smaller villages will peter out, as the current generation of elderly ringers reach the end of their ringing careers. They haven’t been recruiting many new ringers, especially young ones, for decades, so it isn’t going to make a lot of difference.

The larger villages may see groups of local people come together to get their silent bells ringing again, and if they are fortunate to be able to tap into a few experienced teachers, they will be able to establish a new band. Sometimes a benefice band will be established to help facilitate this, or perhaps ringers from a nearby market town will help.

Drawing on my previous experience as a member of both the CCCBR’s Redundant Bells Committee and the CCCBR Ringing Centres Committee, I suspect that only the ‘best’ rings of bells will be saved, but there is then a problem of where to put them. Many parishes are struggling financially, so will be reluctant to take on a major financial commitment, unless there is a direct benefit to them. Also, it will be pointless putting these surplus rings into small village towers, where there will be limited prospect of them being rung. I can, however, see existing ‘poor’ rings of bells swapped for a ‘nice’ second-hand one – e.g. what has happened with the ten from Hanley.

Also, I can’t see the justification for redundant bells to be used to create new ringing centres in an empty tower. The former CCCBR committee was approached to help establish several of these, but they were driven by the desire to re-home a set of bells, at significant expense. However, whilst an attractive idea, there was limited thought given to how these ringing centres were going to be staffed and operate, and there was often an existing suitable tower just up the road which could be used, for a fraction of the cost. It is the people side, rather than the hardware that is important in establishing a new ringing centre. That is why a number of us from the former committee were involved in setting up the Ringing Foundation and subsequently ART to address the fundamental problem of too many bells and not enough ringers..

What I was suggesting (if somewhat clumsily) was that if the church buildings were reordered in some cases a modern church hall could be made redundant and the older church used as a combined space. — J Martin Rushton

Having rung at several churches which have been reordered to enable seven days a week community use, there may be an unexpected problem for the ringers. In order to justify the investment, and pay for future upkeep the parish will be looking to hire out the building to various users, who will be paying a commercial fee for the use of the building. These uses may clash with the bells being rung in the tower. We've had to change a regular practice night when a community choir wished to practice in the church on those evenings instead. We've also had to avoid visiting bands on Monday evenings as Alcoholics Anonymous were using the meeting room for their meetings! To take priority over these other uses, ringers will need to pay a realistic fee for the use of the building.

Also, it seems that many of these reordering's are when evangelical groups take over a dwindling church to turn it round by attracting a new younger congregation. Ringers who just ring the bells and who do not stay on to play a further part in the worship, are not seen as a priority.

I am sure that all sorts of things are happening elsewhere, and what is worrying is that the ringing community has not really woken up to this. A couple of miles from where I live is a church with a ring of five that were installed in 2009. There is no local band and we had not rung there since before Covid and when we sough permission about six weeks ago we were told that pigeons had got in and there was no power.

With a tiny congregation there was no churchwarden, but we finally managed to get permission to inspect the bells about 10 days ago. Fortunately the pigeon had died and its carcass had been cleared away and it tuned out that the electric heating system in the whole church had been turned off to save money. As a result condensation was occurring and thick black mould was forming on the walls and ceiling of the nave.

The church is one of four in the benefice, all close together and is now a 'festival' church with six services a year, most of which are 8am communions. There are at least two other festival churches in our district of 33 towers, and others with small congregations are having difficulty finding someone to take on the churchwarden role, so it is not just about clergy being stretched.

Even quite a few of those that are not festival churches have less than one service a week, sometimes just one a fortnight or even once a month. So it is not just closures that we need to worry about.

what is needed is better strategic and more centralised invested and a proper strategy of how to invest in ringing nationally. In my opinion. — Simon Ridley

As each Guild and Association is a separate legal entity, it's going to be almost impossible to transfer the funds into a central resource. Also, the central initiative to invest more in recruitment and training (the Ringing Foundation) was shot down. However the Central Council could do far more to encourage best practice by Guilds and Associations.

It used to carry out a triennial survey of BRF's and encouraged societies not to sit on funds. When the last survey was carried out in 1995, they held an average of 4.7 years worth of grants in reserve. It has gradually crept up since and is now well over 10 years worth, as societies generally are raising more money than they spend.

What is more worrying is that much of this money is held in short term deposit accounts at low rates of interest. At least the G&B holds about 25% of its reserves in the M&G Charifund which is a long term investment. However like most other societies much is held in the CCLA or CBF short term deposit accounts. The factsheet for the CCLA deposit fund shows that it has seen a compound return of 4.18% over the last ten years, whereas CPI inflation has been 28.29%.

Over the last ten years interest rates and inflation have been low, but this is no longer the case and the value of these reserves that have been built up is likely to diminish far more rapidly, which would be a tremendous waste of resources.

In the W&P Full subs are now £15 per member (435 in 2020); £12.50 per over 60 member (669 in 2020); £10 for Ringing Members in full-time education (83 in 2020) and £2 for Probationary members (98 in 2020)

£4 of each subscription (other than from Probationary Members) goes to the BRF

£1 of each subscription (other than from Probationary Members) is transferred the Guild Training and Development Fund.

70% of the balance goes to the Guild General fund

30% is retained by the Districts

In my experience it can be very difficult to get Districts to spend the money that they hold in their District Funds. We've had arguments about whether we should sponsor young ringers who are attending the RWNYC, and whether or not we should pay instructors travelling expenses (the Guild rules state that each District is encouraged to maintain a list of instructors and that they may claim expenses for providing instruction, but it was argued that no-one has claimed these expenses for 50 years!).

The amount held by Districts, presumably in their current accounts earning no interest, rose from £18,382 in 2016 to £27,727 in 2020.

Surprising therefore that most first peals tend to be major, it would be interesting to find out why. Perhaps some of that market research stuff... :wink: — John de Overa

There's probably a very simple answer. When I learnt to ring, other slightly older young ringers were quite happy to arrange and conduct peal and quarter peal attempts. Branch and District meetings were also advertised in the Ringing World and by going along you met these people and got invited. At that time the gap between the top and bottom of the ability range was also much narrower.

As Michael Foulds of the Whiting Society puts it, as they have got older, those regular peal ringers have become 'risk averse'. I suppose it's not surprising really. If you've spent decades bringing people on you now just want to ring with your mates and ring something more challenging. You're not going to want to ring several peals of Plain Bob Minor. You're going to be more choosy who you invite to ring and what you ring. A quick look at this year's first pealers summary on Pealbase shows that out of 130 so far just 15 rang Plain Bob Minor; there were 10 Plain Bob Triples; 10 Grandsire Triples, 9 Plain Bob Major and 23 of Surprise Major. There were even 2 ringing Surprise Royal for their first peal.

Nowadays, if you ring with a band that regularly rings Plain Bob Doubles, that's as far as you are likely to get. Similarly, if the same person rings with a Surprise Major band most will sooner or later be able to ring it. (I've seen people who I thought would never get there, but 20+ years later they have). The more people around who can ring a method, the more people they can teach to do it. Back in the 70's and 80's Bristol Maximus was only rung in a few select places, nowadays there are far more people around who can ring it. Much of this more advanced ringing goes on outside the traditional Guild/Association/Branch /District structures.

Whether it's ringing at tower level, at Branch/District level, quarters or peals, it's about changing the whole culture, before it's too late. First peal 2015 showed that this was possible if only for a year. What is needed is a more long-term project throughout the next decade. A combination of surveys, and conferences and ongoing research projects could help with this.

do you know if there has also been a change in the stages at which they are rung, e.g. more Minor and less Major? — John de Overa

It's the other way round. First peal's these days tend to be in the higher stages e.g. more major and less minor.

The problem with a survey is that it is a snapshot at a particular point in time. By comparing it with a previous survey you can see that changes have taken place, or it provides a baseline for future surveys. However, there are a lot of underlying factors, and unless you know in advance what they are and structure your questions accordingly, it does not really shed much light on them. What I have been arguing for is far more ongoing research into these factors. This would be a useful function for the Central Council to commission. Everyone can see that there is a big problem without undertaking a survey, but there is no consensus about what to do about it.

For example, if you are a company making widgets you may realise from your sales figures that your customers are buying less widgets, but you need to do the market research to find out why your customers are buying less widgets and what you can do about this. e.g what are your competitors doing? has the market moved on and your customers now looking for widgets with whistles on?

My first peal, like many others in 1970 was the treble to Plain Bob Minor and my first four peals were all either Plain Bob Minor or Grandsire Doubles. When I moved to London in the late 1970's at that time there were many experienced young ringers like me coming to live in London. We thought nothing of working a full day, then catching the tube to ring a peal in the evening at towers like Deptford, Isleworth, Bow E3, West Ham, Bermondsey, Limehouse etc. We would go to the pub afterwards, getting home just before midnight and then go to work the next day. Quite a few of these were rung for the London County Association. However, with far fewer young ringers coming to work in London from the 1990's onwards, the LCA declined and has ceased to exist. Nowadays rather than weekday evening peals, quite a few of those ringers are still ringing peals, but they are now retired and have moved away from London. They now ring weekday attempts. As these peal ringers become even older, the number of peals rung will only decline further, as will the opportunities for others to reach this level. It would be good to make best use of their skills whilst they are still around.

Similar things are happening in the quarter peal world, although bellboard does not go back far enough to undertake a definitive analysis. However, a number of factors are at play. Not least a lot of quarters were rung for Evensong, but with far fewer evening services there are less Sunday evening attempts. With the squeezed middle, it is also more difficult than it used to be to find a band, even though nowadays communication is much easier and we don't have to rely on phoning round on people's landlines! It's also been noticeable that after Covid several people who I could rely on don't wish to ring quarters any more.

It's only by doing the market research and understanding what is really going on below the surface that we will be able to come up with strategies to turn things round, or as is likely to argue, slow the decline!

Actually, it went up in 2015 for the First Peal 2015 initiative, and it has fallen back since. What it and the other graphs on Drew's Pealbase seem to show is that ringing recovered quickly after WW2 back to pre-war levels, and there was a steady state till the 1980's. Ever since there has been a slow decline. In the case of peal ringing this is now quite marked, having reduced from around 600 new entrants per year for much of the 50's, 60's, and 70's. It is now down to less than 150 per year.

Many of those first peals were by grass roots ringers in methods like Plain Bob and Grandsire. Consequently, nowadays we seem to have a squeezed middle, with a missing generation or two of competent change-ringers, and lots of bands struggling to ring plain hunt, let alone steady Plain Bob or Grandsire doubles, and that is if there is still a band in the tower.

Method ringing will not die out, but without major surgery it is going to be confined to a limited number of active centres. The sad thing is that in my experience many of those who have recently taken up ringing are keen to make progress, and to become competent change-ringers, as they see it as a rewarding pastime. However nowadays many do not get the same opportunities to meet their aspirations, that their predecessors had.

2014 138
2015 387
2016 98
2017 113
2018 127
2019 139
2020 42
2021 32

The challenge is doing that in way that matches what ringer want. One purpose of a new survey should be to get a good idea of what that is. — Paul Wotton

I think that there is a danger of confirmation bias if you just ask the existing un-diverse group of aged ringers what they want. The existing structure is very good at maintaining the status quo and the response is likely to be more of the same. However, ringing has been in a slow decline since the 1980’s and many ringers still seem to be in denial about this. As Robert Brown points out eloquently above, there are serious issues that have not been addressed for decades, and from what I know about the rest of the country the situation in Devon is far from unique.

A thorough survey is just a starting point to convince those in positions of influence in Guilds, Associations, Districts and Branches and even some of those on the Council of the urgent need to do something effective. However, whilst the Central Council can do very little on the ground, it can commission an ongoing programme of research which it can use to share good practice, and help make Guilds, Associations, Districts and Branches far more effective in what they were set up to do. For example:

• Improved retention rates: Are towers that hold intensive training sessions more effective than those who do not? If so, by how much? What is the success rate of the Birmingham School of Bell Ringing and similar initiatives?
• Ringing Centres, Hubs and Clusters: How effective are they? What differences have they made? What are the benefits and what are the problems?
• Young ringers: What do we need to do to attract more young ringers? Where has this been done successfully?
• Financial resources: How much money is held in Bell Restoration funds in short term deposit accounts with low interest rates? Are there better ways of investing this money? What is best practice in this field? How does the current situation compare with the last CCCBR Triennial Survey of BRF's.
• Maintenance: How do we look after those towers that have no active band? Should we be investing large sums of money in augmentations and re-hanging bells in towers where there is little prospect of a local band, when we have too many bells and not enough ringers?
• Leadership and succession planning: Many people take on roles such as webmaster and public relations officer with little or no training. They often take on these roles because no-one else is willing to do this. Other roles are very difficult to fill and may remain vacant. What is the age profile of our current leaders and how long have they been in post? How extensive are these problems? What more could be done in other roles to compliment the success of ART in training new teachers over the past ten years?

Number of people ringing their first peal since 1914 - Source Pealbase