Ringing Forums

Yes that would be a good idea, John. Although I think the CC might say "we are here to organise; we can't be the do-ers as well". — Barbara Le Gallez

That's fair comment, but I think publicity and organisation is probably what's needed most to get the ball rolling. I suspect that the areas that are struggling the most are the "boundary badlands" where several association boundaries meet - the historic diocesan boundaries often make little sense in the face of modern urbanisation and transport infrastructure. Several towers in this area are in multiple associations, which I think shows the issue, and many keen ringers round here ring regularly in more than one association. The CCCBR is in the unique position to work across association boundaries, and I think that's what's needed, certainly round here.

Perhaps a sort of "dating website" for ringing might help - "Middle aged overweight balding ringer looking for like minded soulmates with GSH, for weekly fun and Surprise Minor"? The problem for many of us "late starters" is it's difficult to hook in to the small informal groupings who have been ringing together for decades, so unless you try very hard (and get lucky) a lot of people get so far along and then stall. Us late starters may never reach the giddy heights but I think we can perform an important role as a seed bed for the next generation.

So I would say, Central Council, keep up your great work, but you need to do something that makes you visible (or maybe audible?) to every single ringer in the country! — Barbara Le Gallez

I think helping with training in areas where method ringing is struggling or has died out would be a one way. If the associations in those areas were capable of sustaining ringing then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place, so it's somewhere where the CCCBR could make a big impact.

I haven't read through all of the Belfry Upkeep one yet but it looked good from a quick glance - I'll feed back anything after I've read all of it. The other two sound interesting as well, I project managed our rehang in 2018, I'll be interested to see if it contains warnings about all the mistakes we made ;-)

As @A J Barnfield said the numbers you'll find are all just estimates, how long a peal takes depends on the number and size of the bells, the state of the installation and probably the air temperature and age of the ringers as well!

You can get an idea of the current peal speeds from this link to BellBoard, in the last column. If you want to play with the numbers you can export them as CSV via the link at the bottom of the page.

For historical records, you could dig around in Felstead, but I don't seem to be able to find any times on there, although they are commonly recorded on old peal boards in towers.

There is a good explanation here, including a table of how long it would take to ring all the permutations of different numbers of bells.

The Mathematics of Bell Ringing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jXUo6KaVs

as I said, "from afar" ;-) From the outside the CCCBR can look like one fairly amorphous blob, the distinction between "Central Council", committees and the CCCBR isn't really interesting. It's measured by those not intimately involved by what it does, not how it organises itself - frankly, people don't care as long as it is visibly doing things - something which I think post-CRAG has significantly improved. The Dove's website & database revamp, the new belfry upkeep site, the Devon CC eBook, the mobile belfry, "Calling It Round" are I think all good examples of things that have visibly changed - and I know there are other new things as well, those are just the ones that immediately sprang to mind.

As a "rank and file" ringer observing from afar, before the CRAG changes my impression was the Council was a pointless talking shop, whereas now stuff seems to be happening, albeit still slowly in some cases.

If "democratic" means "everyone has to vote on everything before anything gets done" then yes, it's less "democratic", and a jolly good thing too. I don't see it as any less accountable though, in fact I suspect if anything in practice it's more as the changes have meant more people are taking an interest and scrutinising what's happening.

thank you for the advice, however it's significantly easier to find good 6 bell ringing round here than it is 8 - and it's hard enough to find 6. The minor band who have taken me under their wing are capable major ringers and if there are ever 8 at a practice they'll ring on 8. I've still got plenty to go at ringing minor, and I'd rather aim at being a decent minor ringer than a bad major one!

the battery life was awful and almost certainly wouldn't have lasted the length of a peal with video running.

Here in Darkest Northern Derbyshire we are still waiting for the herald to make his way over Doctor's Gate, the packhorse trail over Snake Pass, bringing news from as afar as Sheffield. We've had strange portents of light in the sky over the last few nights, so we knew matters of great import were afoot.

But that might just have been the planes on approach to Manchester airport...

A comment on the CCCBR page on Facebook, posted just after midnight last night (Friday 9th):

Cameron Watt
Hello all - I'm the author of the national CofE parish church guidance and can be contacted at camerondotwattatchurchofenglanddotorg - happy to be contacted for clarification on anything in our document. With the cascade of proclamations for the new monarch beginning Saturday morning with the Principal Proclamation from the balcony at St. James's Palace at 11am. There will then be a further proclamation in the City of London at noon, and then further proclamations in the other national capitals the following day (Sunday) at noon. There will then be proclamations at county and unitary authority levels from 2pm on Sunday, and at town/parish level from 4pm. The hope is that there will be muffled (or half-muffled) ringing before the local proclamation, then unmuffled ringing following the local proclamations, then muffled ringing until after the funeral. Her Majesty enjoyed church bell ringing, and the way that it unites communities. Thank you all for all that you do, and especially at this time - when you are helping to unite our nation in both commemorating the late Queen, and celebrating the accession of the King.

"unmuffled ringing following the local proclamations" and "proclamations at county and unitary authority levels from 2pm on Sunday, and at town/parish level from 4pm" seems very clear to me, and conflicts with the CCCBR advice in the same FB post:

Following further discussion and interpretation of the CofE guidance, we suggest the following for open ringing following the proclamation of the new Monarch expected on Saturday. Open ringing from 11am (BST) on Saturday (D+1) following the proclamation announcement until the flags are lowered again at 1pm (BST) on Sunday.

Having already rescheduled once, to move the proclamation ringing today, it's simply too late to move it again. There's already a confused mix of ringing open/closed today/tomorrow across the country.

Plus if we are to ring open today and keep so until flags are lowered at 1pm on Sunday, we'll be ringing open for Sunday Service at 10am - which seems somewhat strange as it's a service that will commemorate the queen.

@Simon Linford this absolutely isn't your fault or the CCCBR's, but can you please express the confusion annoyance of the ringing community to the CofE on our behalf? There's simply no excuse for this shambles, they've had literally decades to figure all this out in advance, including different times of day of the announcement of The Queen's death, the day of the week it happened on and the fact she might be at Balmoral.

I think the other thing that would be helpful is guidance on whether wedding ringing & practices should continue, albeit muffled and ringing something within each band's ability. My own feeling is that that the public will want to hear as much ringing as possible, not less.

I notice that the document on the CCCBR website has now been updated and is the same as the one on the CofE site. However I've just had an email from our association chair, he's been told by the diocese that we are to ring on Saturday. I've pointed out the inconsistency between that and the latest Lambeth House guidance... So yes indeed, "Some checking to be done"!

Note, it appears they've moved the accession ringing back a day, to Sunday. The CCCBR and CofE documents don't agree any longer, I assume the CCCBR copy will be updated at some point. The CofE one is here:

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/Guidance%20for%20parish%20churches%20on%20the%20death%20of%20HM%20the%20Queen%20-%208th%20September%202022.pdf

4pm seems to be the earliest for open ringing, and just for the accession. They should be muffled again afterwards, until the funeral.

https://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Guidance-for-parish-churches-on-the-death-of-HM-the-Queen-8th-September-2022.pdf

I'm happy to provide a list of suggestions, but I suspect this forum is not the best way of doing so. I think there would have to be a large amount of "Suck it and see". Some ideas will already be "on the list", some will be non-starters, others will seem like a good idea but don't work in practice, some will work in one place and not another, other initially non-obvious things will become obvious only after some time.

If anyone really knew how to do this, the discussion wouldn't be happening in the first place.

No disagreement here.

as I said, "experienced ringer". I know the difference is there but I still have to mentally adapt when I ring on "real" bells, it would be better if I didn't have to. And I know of one case where someone who learned solely on the sim simply could not ring with real ringers, so realism is important. And I don't have beginners ringing with the moving ropes either, because that would be silly.

There are two workgroups focussed on young ringers... — Graham John

Glad to see it, but it only addresses a small section of the current ringing community. I hope that's "as well as" addressing the issues with progression that many existing, non-youth ringers are facing. We don't need to work to recruit those people, we just need to help them, it's pretty much the definition of low-hanging fruit.

Glad to see the other initiatives as well, but I don't think they are sufficient. As I've already said, the associations in my area are pretty much a busted flush as far as addressing the challenges around method ringing goes - if they weren't then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. What would help is something that bypasses the current association model when that's necessary.

I have read that some in the the CCCBR would like to move to a direct membership model. To justify that, the CCCBR needs to be providing something that can't be provided by the existing territorial associations. Support for restarting method ringing in areas where it has or is dying out ticks just about every box I can think of. There are a number of ways I think the CCCBR could help, and it is an unrivalled position to do so as it has access to expertise at a national level. One of the earlier posts mentioned "sustainable" and I think that's absolutely key, no point parachuting in expertise if things fall apart as soon as it's gone. Roadshows, courses, ringing centres etc are all good things to have, but empowering and supporting people so they can get to the point where they can self-sustain in the long-term is I believe more important.

Yes, the Stedman equivalent is interesting, particularly when it swaps between H&B and B&H dodges at the back, thank you. And next time my striking looks like the blue line in Abel I'll claim I am right :grin:

On that point, Abel, at least, shows the target striking the same as the red "squared off" version, perhaps it would be good to have an option to display it as the blue one? Mind you, Abel has other things that are probably more important to address, such as not modelling wheel sizes for the moving ringers. An experienced ringer actually picked up on that when I gave him his first go on the simulator, although I believe one of the simulator packages (Virtual Belfry?) does account for wheel size.