Last month I wrote about the new method that we devised and rang on All Saints Day. This month I will try to explain a little of what was entailed in ringing it. Last month I wrote about the new method that we devised and rang on All Saints Day. This month I will try to explain a little of what was entailed in ringing it.
Change ringing is musical, but not like conventional. music, hence my title (misquoted from the song Star Trekkin’). The bells sound in sequence, with each sounding once before any sounds again, and one or more pairs swap place in the ‘change’ between sequences (called rows). Every one of the 5152 rows in the All Saints Day peal was different.
The ringers have no music – it’s all done from memory. And they don’t remember the rows, they learn a pattern.
Imagine the rows written out with lines joining the position of each bell in successive rows, like the first few rows shown here.
Then extract the complete line for one bell, and that is what the ringers learn. On the right is All Saints day. It’s cyclic so the bottom wraps round to the top.
Bell 1 follows the red line and the others follow the blue line. Each bell starts at a different point (on the dashed lines, which divide ‘leads’, a bit like verses in a hymn.
This pattern lasts 224 rows, and although the peal is 23 times that length the entire paths consists of parts of this pattern. At a call (there were 33 in the peal we rang) a few bells swap onto each other’s line and then continue. That enables ringing long lengths to be rung without repeating any rows.
The tower website has more about how methods work: allsaintswokinghambells.org.uk/AbRinging/#Methods
John Harrison (November 2025)
| Back to top | Return to Article list | Feedback |