Ringing Forums

I’m sorry that you choose not to give thought what I’d written and choose to conflate the general and the specific or differentiate as the fancy takes you without due consideration. To pretend that losing learners because there are too many at practices is daft as that means that, in that particular area, there are simply too few appropriately structured practices to cater for those interested in taking up ringing.

“…practices that try to be "all things to all men"…” Lucky bands, having a surfeit of potential ringers, and shame on those bands for not adapting to suit their luck. As for the experienced ringers, they’ll have plenty of options available so if they don’t have the temperament to pass on those skills they themselves have acquired on the back of the efforts of their predecessors then, perhaps, the bands are better off without them.

“…invite-only…” QP group being “exclusionary” or not? – the context was practices in home towers, which potential learners and beginners are aware of as they are public knowledge, they’re hardly excluded from a private group having the capacity to ring anywhere as those newcomers won’t comprehend the existence that entity.

“…the majority of any "monopolising" is done by the "Determined Underachievers"…” Such intolerance without posing any potential solution is demeaning of the group that exhibits it. That Barbara couched her question in the terms she did rather indicate that her perception of the problem is different to yours, and that she is open to suggestions regarding solutions rather than polarising rhetoric.

It’s true that extempore groupings of particular abilities and preferences will arise in any group activity – it will always be thus, and of itself it can enrich the activity to the general benefit by ‘raising the average’. But for any group activity to survive, it must have the ability to encompass the needs and aspirations of the least competent / least knowledgeable as well as the more / most advanced.

Your QP grouping example is not exclusionary - it exists as an attractant for those of similar skills and aspirations and it’s future existence and growth or decline will be amorphous. That QP group can be, and most probably is somewhat peripatetic.

However, the ringing room at each tower at which such a group may ring must accommodate, (albeit at other times), the people of least knowledge / experience seeking to enter into the activity, and without whom the Exercise will wither and die. I laud those with the ability to advance their own knowledge / experience and thereby better the knowledge / experience base of ringing nationally, but those people need to acknowledge that, by monopolising practice sessions, they are consciously or subconsciously debarring those of “less than adequate” qualification.

A tower near me has their practice evenings in two parts, the boundary between the parts being adjusted in accordance with the number and needs of the beginners / least experienced ringers. The result? The home band has progressed steadily from having a small proportion of experienced ringers supporting a larger proportion of “beginners” to being a more homogenous group most of whom are steadily increasing their personal repertoires. Yet this has not shut the door to individuals coming in at the bottom and being welcomed at the first part of the practices.

Lets not start sucking eggs! Your “fine”s and “not fine”s are understandable - but merely stating them doesn’t advance an answer to Barbara’s fundamental question. Nor would suggesting, say, that the recalcitrant student push off and learn to ring somewhere else. If “the band” has voted to seek ever higher standards it’s then a short step to “the band” voting to cull the least proficient members and only allow replenishment by finding ringers of a similar standing – a bit like the Football League but more brutal.

Such cliques banishing members and vetting candidates is the slippery slope to the secret society mentality prevalent in ringing decades ago. Was it any wonder that hundreds (thousands?) of interested potential ringers were lost to the Exercise? Or that the numbers of regular ringers fell and towers fell silent or could only ring rounds & stuff? Or that some towers were only kept alive by inadequately trained but dedicated survivors? And we now wonder at why ringing nationally, after going through such hardships, is only fighting back through the emergence of brand new thinking such as the ART programmes.

I’ve reread Rosalind & Lucy’s contributions, which touch on survival skills. It’s becoming more and more apparent these days that the job of TC can no longer be an all-encompassing multi-role one-person-fixes-everything role. The emerging role of Ringing Master alongside the TC shares the load and, hopefully, gets the best at each function doing what they do best. I received more advice on my rope-handling from an experienced ringer “sitting out” while the rest at the practices rang their methods. That person wasn’t the most accomplished method ringer or organiser so wouldn’t fit the modern roles of RM or TC, but he was the best teacher in the band. If we must consider separating Barbara’s problematic “determined underachiever” from “the band” because the latter desires some form of exclusivity, then we must also consider separating “the band” from “the tower.

We must not inhibit people who aspire to be in “a Surprise band”, but can their tower afford them if it has to turn people away for being sub-standard? Such bands will invariably be ringing at various towers as opportunity arises so perhaps we must begin to think of such bands as not tower-centric but peripatetic. Is it in the Incumbent’s best interest to have a home band that rings wonderfully but which is more loyal to it’s own objectives than the Church’s? Surely it is in the Incumbent’s best interest to gave a Home Band with a record of openness and general advancement of a continuing flow of new ringers.

As a sufferer of reduced cognitive functioning for some 15 years now I advocate providing the environment in which someone with this, be it dementia or any other cause, be allowed to TEACH! This sounds counterintuitive but, believe me, for at least a little time it can open the floodgates. Passing on knowledge somehow causes temporary remission of the inhibiting factors underlying cognitive dysfunction. The degree to which someone is inhibited dictates how far she/he is incapacitated. The lady mentioned might or might not now be considered competent to give full instruction in tower or handbell ringing, but the act of passing on her knowledge in the familiar surroundings of a ringing room will have therapeutic effects that will be evidenced by her volubility and dexterity. As we age, communal activities can make a significant contribution to conserving communication and motor skills, and can be of especial merit for early-onset dementia, short-term memory dysfunction, etc in that they can help sustain cognitive function. Passing on our own acquired skills is hard-wired into the human condition and any steps to provide this lady with the opportunity to do so are to be applauded.

A factor that hasn't been examined in this long thread is wheter or not the teacher understands, or, perhaps, is even aware of what the student's aspirations actually are. Some can progress eventually to great things, but others have more limited desires. That someone continues to attend shows that they are getting "something" from the activity, but if they are not aspiring to ring thousands of peals, or only methods on ever larger numbers of bells, so be it. In my own case I've never had the inclination to learn to ring ever-more complex methods - but I DID want to be a trusted tenor ringer in quarters of the simpler methods. Weird or what? If a student is being 'pushed', the question is 'why'. If the student appears 'wooden', again, find out why.......

Our bells have been unringable for 15-120 years due to the condition of the tower so, in 2016, I began chiming the bells. There has been a steady influx of visitors to the tower to discover more about the bells and their various ways of being sounded. They're heard regularly, and we often get favourable comments from the community. The eye-watering anticipated cost of fixing the tower, then refurbishing the bells for full circle ringing, are daunting and unlikely to be found for many years yet, but we're still doing our bit to spread the word about bells and bellringing.

An eight bell set and a twelve bell set were refurbished for my home tower by a donation as a memorial in thanks for the lives of family members etc. Perhps you might find a family willing to do the same for you, in wjhole or in part of the costs.

It's possible to search and find some "other" bells that are chimes (e.g.using Ellacombe-style frames either only or through force-majeur) but I'm unclear whether or not there has been any concerted effort to list the thousands of tower bells that are either currently or permanently unavailable for full circle ringing. It would require a gargantuan effort to attempt an entire catalogue of all tower bells, but with so many towers now at risk would it not be opportune for a national trawl to be made via county associations, guilds etc to identify and, perhaps, assess non-full-circle towers? Whilst that would be unlikely to acquire 100% of the extant bells it would surely go some way to inform future decision-making? Dropping such data into Dove would surely be feasible akong the existing formats? I'm struggling to keep the bells at my home tower heard as there is an embargo on full-circle ringing due to structural issues. However, that does means that I could support other bells currently languishing within a reasonable distance. "Adopt a bell" is a proven fundraising tactic when "we" need work on "our" bells - surely if information were to be available regarding the languishing bells ringers and supporters of tower bells could concert ther efforts to rescue, or at least conserve, such at-risk bells?

An advantage of John's application of a simulator to the situation Barbara highlighted is the ability to repeat a passage identically several times so that any issues the student has can be un-picked and gentle addressed by the 1:1 coaching.

Not everyone needs to get from raw beginner to ringing their 1,000th peal by Christmas! All the talk of "motivation" is fine PROVIDED the teacher knows and respects the aspirations of the student and tailors a fine balance of tuition and mentoring to suit. Presumptions around how fast and how far someone must be advanced are commonplace and can, in fact, have a very negative effect on a student's confidence. For example, for half my life I've aspired to be a steady and trusted tenor ringer, though always at the back. Attaining methods per se was never a driver for me, nor has it been for a number of people I know who also came to ringing in middle age. A possible solution to Barbara's problem might be to have a month in which no "teaching" is carried out with the individual but in which she participates in ringing that is chosen to allow her to utilise such skills as she has already acquired in a lower-stress manner. Provided she is supported with advice when something is less than perfect, rather than being criticised for that as a "mistake", her engagement with ringing might well be re-set and open to learning more. Perhaps, like me, she knows that, for her at this time, happiness lies in doing the basics well in the absence of enforced further advancement. With a level of contentment now, she may very well choose to advance further in the future. Without that contentment, she will surely leave forever.

Noise "nuisance" is a pernicious thing. It can be exceedingly debilitating for people sensitised to a particular sound - or the absence of a sound (that triggers our "alert" response and is just as stress-inducing as sudden-onset of a "nuisance" noise). I had a tragic case of an elderly person who was sensitised to the click of an actuator in a lift room on the roof of her block of flats. It clicked every time the lift was called. Although she was in a top floor flat, hers was the third one along from the lift shaft. I could hear the click when standing outside the lift room door, but a sound engineer picked it up in the ceiling complainant's flat! Cost a packet to hitch up the gubbins on an acoustic isolation sandwich. The impact of bells on complainants can usually be ameliorated to some extent, in terms of volume, frequency of use, duration etc, but if it's the quality / nature of the sound then that's much more tricky to resolve. It's essential to establish exactly what it is that upsets the complainant before any knee-jerk reaction leads to unsuccessful changes......the biggest hurdle is entering into a non-judgemental dialogue.

Without getting into the specific circumstances of complaints about particular towers, I want to mention a phenomenon that is not widely understood but which is very often a factor underlying noise nuisance complaints generally. Part of our "flight or fight" response relates to sounds. Our perception of a sound alters with exposure and repetition, to the extent that once a particular sound has annoyed us, even only slightly, we become habituated to subconsciously 'listening out for it' as if it is a threat precursor. The next time we hear it our stress level increases a little more than the previous time until it becomes intolerable after a few repetitions, like nails scraping a blackboard. This is seen by others as an unreasonable, irrational response, but it can be psychologically devastating for the aggrieved person. Examples include, say, a neighbour's yapping dog that the first time is just a minor intrusion but after a week or two becomes an instant trigger of elevated stress on first yap. It is very difficult to ameliorate the problem because it is not the duration of the "noise nuisance" of a bit of ringing on a particular date or time that is the problem, but the listener's instantaneous stress response at the first bong. Having been involved with noise transmission problems every so often throughout my working life I know of distressing they can become for everyone involved. With ringing, every tower's circumstances are different and there cannot be a "one size fits all answer" when someone complains. However, you can be sure that minor tweaks to the duration of ringing periods ALONE is NOT the answer.

Let's just remember that a lot of the, for want of a better phrase, "less active" membership of County Associations etc effectively cross-subsidise a lot of the youngsters we're trying to get into ringing by donating MORE than their own annual subscriptions - e.g. to BRFs, appeals, legacy funds etc. - without which the finances of those Associations would be in far less healthy states than they currently are.

I'm proud to be a member of my County Association but cannot attend functions so compensate through spending a chunk of my pension on bell-related costs.

My home tower is under an embargo on full circle ringing so I frame-chime the bells when I'm well enough to get up the tower. All the debate about the counting or not counting of members is fun but avoids the critical questions. How much does CC need and how much can they morally ask from the bell-sounding community.

Enough debate - cut to the chase.

Well said, Rober

I can't speak to my county association's finances but currently have no objection to the amount I'm asked to pay them and willingly add a donation each year as they work wonders on a shoe-string. However, my home tower is basically un-funded and is only able to keep it's historically significant bells sounding through being entirely funded by private donation. How many other towers survive on the donations of their ringers alone? If there are few or no local ringers, are the bells left to languish unmaintained? I think that Central Council should find out a bit more about TOWER finances nationally before it makes such profound assumptions conflating the sustaining of its own funding from affiliates with the funding of targeted topics for local action.

Having used full industrial quality PPE to remove 2.77cuM of nest materials, guano, eggshells and dead pigeons etc from a tower nearly 30 years ago I was certainly upset to be without PPE when I was accidentally exposed in 2020 to a cloud of such stuff that had remained undisturbed in a tower for 25+ years. Nearly 4 years later I'm still under a hospital respiratory department because, during sleep, my blood oxygen level falls off a cliff and that syndrome, through whatever cause, is often fatal to men over 60yoa. Birds have no place inside any area accessible to bell-ringers and other non-professionals.

I sympathise with people who have been the subject of unwanted / malicious calls etc through having their contact details published, but we now live in a Society where, perhaps, we need to accept some irritations as the price we pay for the wonderful communications systems we now have. I prepared a broadsheet-style handout about my home tower's bells some5 years ago which gets updated every so often. Its handed out / left in Church / distributed amongst some local neighbour businesses etc and it includes my contact details. Yes, I do get occasional junk mail and nuisance calls / spam but these have all been of an ilk that "everyone" now gets. I've received nothing untoward from the hundreds of paper copies of my newsletter that are "out there". Peter Southeran's experience / observations match mine and, I suspect, almost everyone else's.

Are we looking at this from the wrong end of the problem? Surely we need to take any and all opportunities to get people into ringing. Once any newcomers reach the standard of competent rounds (and call changes?) then please do let more people start. There should not be any pressure to bring those first people to methods - they will know when they want to move forward.

Richard, is your definition of "cotter pin" correct? When the term is used with a bicycle it's the funny-shaped rods that set the pedals firmly on the shaft, without relative movement. Many cotter pins on cranks (and also certain nuts) have split pins as well to ensure that the cotter pin (or nut) cannot become detached. The modern articulated chiming hammers at my home tower are held together with split pins (not "cotter pins") because the components need to move relative to each other.

Sadly, JH has a good point.

The method for providing fire protection of penetrations through floors and walls is well established and is of two forms - firstly fully sealing around, say, a pipe, with fully non-combustible material, and secondly, using intumescent materials with or without collapsing containment.

When you need the hole in the ceiling (e.g. for a bell rope), a double-walled tubular sheath containing intumescents can be used. The intumescent is between the concentric tubes forming the cylinder and the inner wall collapses / deforms with the passage of hot products of combustion, thereby closing the opening and stopping the propagation of the fire to the upper compartment / room / chamber.

Sadly, my home tower does not practice what I preach!. I also recommended intumescent strips around all the trap doors etc and the use of intumescent sealant to fill the many gaps between the floorboards in the intermediate and bell chambers. These were not progressed for unknown reasons.

The lovely Victorian Gothic doors have large gaps around the leaves and there more intumescent strips were recommended but not pursued.

The Risk Assessment for a church MUST ALSO include the tower and the specialist equipment therein (the bells etc), but how many Steeple Keepers ensure that it is?

With the vast majority of towers only having a single means of access / escape, and with the individual compartments / chambers / rooms usually having no more than lancet "windows", the most serious risk to bell ringers is fire near or in the tower below them. I've never met another bell-ringer who has considered this.