Ringing Forums

no chance of disturbing the neighbours is more complex than the sound level of the bells. Among other things it depends on the background sound level. As an example our shutters reduce the sound level by approx 20 dB when closed. You probably wouldn't notice the ringing from when there is lots of traffic but with no traffic they are audible for several hundred metres with direct line of site.
Is the sound of quiet bells disturbing? It's a bit like a ticking clock - one person forgets its there but another finds it really distracting.
I could dig out the measurements we made if they are any use.

One thing I find irritating is the icon shown with each discussion entry. It doesn't represent the topic (so no useful value) but the first poster. I keep hitting it by accident when trying to open the conversation, and then have to backtrack. Why not remove it?

or at least stop it rising?

I'm not convinced that charging would adversely affect recruitment. Do a thought experiment with a comparable skilled activity such as various sports, musical instruments or driving, where payment for tuition is the norm. Now suppose the charging was outlawed and all tuition had to be free. Would more adults and children come forward to learn? Would the same number of tutors be available? Would the quality of tuition be the same? I suspect not. Why should ringing be different?

iwould charging really be a barrier to entry? Outside of ringing people don't expect everything to be free and expect to pay for tuition. It seems to be longer established ringers who have strong feelings about it.
And my reaction to fun is like AJB's. Ringers certainly need to get satisfaction out of ringing to keep them hooked, but if all they get is fun I doubt it would last when something else more amusing comes along.

I think 'the future of' is an under defined concept. The context implies achieving some 'good' or at least acceptable long term outcome, what you define as 'good' affects not only the two answers but also yhe relationship between them.
In simple terms for change ringing to continue sustainably then ringing must also. That's true even if the outcome is (say) 10,000 ringers, all of whom changes in (say) 1000 towers. But that might not be considered a 'good' outcome for 'ringing', certainly not by those who see change ringing as an inevitably niche activity, and advocate a future largely built on call changes.

let's not go down that route. The forums should be for discussion and information exchange, not attention seeking. If a contribution is particularly valuable there are words in the English language to say so.

I would say ratification was by default. In practice there would need to be an extreme problem for a willing volunteer leader with the confidence of the band not yo be accepted.
I'm not sure appointment is necessarily recent either. I think there always were places where the TC wasn't elected but offered the job by either PCC or the incumbent. I don't have data to prove that, it's just a hunch about 'the bad old days'.

it's Horne not Thorne, which might be why your search went awry. Alison asked the Historians and CJP responded but I don't remember all the detail. Searching for the right name should help though.

that may be the legal position, but the custom of the ringers electing their leader (subject to the approval of the PCC) seems likely to produce more effective results.

surely it's not the CC's budget. After all we used to use hotels for headquarters. The reason for trying to keep the cost down was to avoid excluding CC members who were less affluent, notably those who were younger.

that's because of flaws in the underlying text generated by the OCR. There's an explanation with examples and how to get round it in the CC advice for biographic research. Look in the section on search techniques in: http://bellringinghistory.org.uk/Biog_Advice.aspx

it will depend on the tower. Whatever normally accumulates in the bell chamber will settle on any surface undisturbed for a long time. In our case it's blown dust and pigeon down but we have a wooden roof above the bells. If there was a sandstone spire above then stone dust would be in the mix.

I wonder whether the distinction between ringing by the tune and ringing by path.
When I'm ringing handbells I'm often not aware of the actual place each hand is in. Im aware of the overall pattern and largely 'feeling' my way through it while listening to the sound, which does feel as if I know it in some sense, though I can't fully know it whe ringing a quarter. I suspect my brain has learnt some aspect of the structure that enables it to predict what comes next from what I have just heard, though perhaps not all the time.
I suspect my brain might also be simplifying the sound in terms of 'my bells' and 'other bells' so a lead will sound familiar if my bells follow the same path even if some of the thorns don't.
This is speculation of course, and when ringing I don't have a lot of spare attention to think about what i am hearing.
Also I'm much less conscious of any similar effect in the tower so it might not read across to the person in the original question. But it does suggest there might be more of a continuum between different ways of knowing what to do.

Pat Halls did most of the work. I just updated it and added some.

Some years ago the CC Biographies Committee compiled a list of ringing societies including when they were formed, merged, divided or wound up. It's almost certainly incomplete although I've added some since then. See: http://jaharrison.me.uk/Temp/RingingSocs.html

has it changed? Hard to say because we are comparing what we remember with now. Our standards might have changed and our memory is notoriously prone to biases.
Do we have to be careful not to upset people? The obvious comparator there is other activities. For example would a conductor not say anything when an orchestra plays out of tune for fear of offending the musicians?
I think there is a culture problem with the attitude to quality with many, though not all bands. But i think it's deeper than not wanting to talk about it (suppressing bad news) often it is simply not knowing what bad news is. That in itself is a symptom of not valueing it enough to learn.

joke noted, but there's a serious thread of truth. New ringers absorb their habits and attitudes from other ringers. In that sense, we (collectively) teach them what is and isn't important. Obviously we have a range of values but those who do value quality clearly don't pull hard enough against those who don't to shift the average.

you are probably right that most ringers could tell the difference between good an bad ringing when listening to it. I suspect the problem is that they don't listen to what they are ringing. Listening, especially critically, takes effort and focus. If bell control, ringing the method and worrying about ropesight use up attention there may not be any left for listening. Metaphorically they get 'tunnel vision' and just don't register the audible rhythm. If they have been taught to ring visually and never developed the habit of latching onto the sound, it becomes a 'too difficult' optional extra.

'in the belfry windows' is a bit vague. Are they within the depth of the louvres or protruding on the inside? And if they protrude, is there still space to fit sound control behind? If there's a ledge to build on that helps. Otherwise you have to fix everything on the inner surface. But there are lots of other factors to consider, for example: How big an opening do you need? How far in will the shutters protrude, and is there adequate clearance?
When we installed sound control in 1982 things were fairly easy. The open area we needed wasn't too big since the louvres were already partly bricked up, and we had a ledge to build on. See: http://www.allsaintswokinghambells.org.uk/ASTower/BellChamber/SoundControl/index.html#Pictures