For centuries church bells have sounded, calling people to worship, in celebration of special occasions,                        in remembrance and to mark special events.

In the very early days, the bells were ‘chimed’ to make a sound, but the ringers had little control over the order in which the bells sounded and therefore the ‘music’ they played.

The origins of what we call change ringing lie in the sixteenth century when church bells began to be hung with a full wheel enabling the bell to swing in a full circle and back again. This gave ringers control of their bell, which       allowed sets of bells (rings) to be rung in a continuously changing pattern. Music is created by moving bells up and down the ringing order to a defined sequence known as a method.

The bells are tuned to a normal (diatonic) scale, and it is usual to start with ringing down the scale, a sequence which ringers call ‘rounds’.

The order in which the bells sound is then altered to give different sequences called ‘rows’ or ‘changes’.

Changes may be called out individually by the conductor, and this style is known as call-change ringing.

Alternatively, the changes may be made to a pre-set pattern or ‘method’, and each ringer must learn that method in order to know when his or her particular bell must sound in each row. This style is known as method ringing.

A peal is the special name given to a specific type of performance of change ringing which meets certain exacting conditions for duration, complexity and quality.

Peals can take around three hours to ring and are published in The Ringing World. The only peal to have been          recorded as being rung here in Overton was in 1976.  

In addition to ordinary peals, ringers often ring quarter-peals, which are a quarter of the length of a full peal, making them easier to ring as most quarter-peals take around 45 minutes to complete.

Before any ringing can take place, the bells have to be ‘raised’, a process where a band of ringers increases the swing of tower bells from mouth down to mouth upwards while keeping them ringing in rounds.

At the end of ringing the opposite is done, a process of ‘lowering’ the bells, where the swing of the bells is gradually reduced until they are at rest mouth downwards, again keeping the bells ringing in rounds throughout.

How much do the bells weigh?

* hundredweight - quarters - pounds