Ringing Forums

Comment from Surrey Association Facebook page:

"Is there not a central library that would be willing to house the CCCBR library as a special collection? It would meet many categorisation criteria - social, religious, scientific, engineering, architectural, etc - in much the same way that certain records from sadly defunct foundries can be...."
Mike Shelley

Simon, I was interested to read from the survey commentary that "... 62% of towers with bells rang on the surveyed Sunday and that was seen as a worry (I am sure it’s less than that now),…
Of course, ringing and the church organisation has changed a lot since then but in our own tower, if the survey was run now and the survey date co-incided with one of the three Sundays when there is no service, our data would contribute to the low %. But we hold weekly practices and sim practices, and ring for many other local secular occasions. Sunday service ringing is not necessarily a good indicator as to the health of ringing in an individual parish. We consider SS ringing as an important part of our function but it doesn't significantly contribute to our ringing.

That's a very good point, reflecting a change in the Church to which we are adapting. When 'clusters' or ringers who join forces to ring at different towers in a benefice for instance is discussed, the problems seems to be persuading ringers to go and ring at the tower which has the service in that particular week, as opposed to having a week off when the service is elsewhere!

At one of my local towers, Edgbaston, the vicar is not particularly bothered if the bells ring for a service or not. He knows they don't have much effect on attendance. But he knows that whenever the bells ring people in their gardens are reminded the church is there and often remark to him how much they like to hear them.

Thanks for your comments. I agree that bells don't affect attendance but that their sound is appreciated on Sundays and otherwise. We often receive favourable comments about hearing the bells, many from non-church goers.

Our two adjacent villages (Gt & Lt Gransden, Cambs) are about 1400 people and we are always emailing the "list" telling everyone what we are doing. Jubilee weekend PR covers 4 local F/B pages, the village email list, and the Association's F/B pages. Publicity is everything, but that's for a different discussion!

Our parish changed the service times and neglected to inform us, and low numbers post pandemic preventing Sunday service ringing was not commented on by the vicar... I suppose its changing priorities. Clustering is definitely the way forward for keeping ringing going on Sundays at churches which want it (which do not always correlate with the towers with a resident band).