If you know little or nothing about bell-ringing, this is the place for you!

Find out more about the peculiarly English style of bell-ringing known as “change-ringing”, which has spread beyond the British Isles to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, USA, and Canada (plus two towers in the Netherlands, one tower in Belgium, and one tower in France).

On this page you will find answers to the following questions:

Learning to Ring

Learning to ring involves learning and developing two types of skill that are probably unrelated to anything the new ringer has learned before.

First, there is the motor skill of learning how to control a bell hung for “full-circle ringing” (see below for what this means), generally referred to as “bell-handling”. The aim is to be able to make the bell sound pretty much exactly when you want it to when ringing with other ringers (who are each ringing their own bell), so that there is an even gap between the sound of each successive bell. Initially, this is taught on a one-to-one basis, often with the bell silenced by tying the clapper; many people can learn to handle a bell on their own in less than an hour. However, being able to handle a bell accurately enough to ring with other ringers takes longer, perhaps as long as it might take to pass a car-driving test. It rather depends on how often and for how long the learner can practise, and you would not expect to pass your driving test very quickly if you practised for only ten minute a week! As with other motor skills, younger people tend to pick up bell-handling more quickly than older people. With practice and opportunity, you will find that being able to ring with other ringers, as part of a band that can produce a good rhythm on the bells, is a very rewarding experience.

The second type of skill is the cognitive process of learning “change-ringing”: the “music” that is rung on bells (see below for an introduction to what this means). Most people will be able to start this within a few weeks of beginning to learn, but it depends largely on their ability to handle a bell comfortably. This is nothing like learning different pieces of music for the trumpet or the clarinet except that, in the same way as for a musical instrument, there is virtually no limit to what one can learn. Being able to ring new and different change-ringing methods with other ringers provides the greatest sense of achievement and satisfaction. But not everyone strives to learn new things all the time, and many people are happy to stay at the level at which they feel most comfortable and confident.

There seems to be an interaction between learning these skills, so that a learner may be able to handle a bell confidently when there is not much else to think about, but when the mental effort of change-ringing is added in, the handling becomes erratic. The answer to this is PRACTISE!

Where to Learn

Ringing is taught by other ringers, almost always on bells that belong to a church. If you are not sure where your nearest church with bells is, or how to contact the ringers, with your post code and I will try to help. Don’t worry if you are not a church-goer: ringers come in all shades of religious belief and disbelief, and generally will be interested in you only as a potential new ringer. But if you decide to take up ringing you will be expected to ring for church services – this is the unofficial “deal” that comes with the huge amount of pleasure to be got, virtually free, from ringing the church’s bells.


Full-Circle Ringing

Each bell is attached to a beam known as a “headstock”. The headstock has bearings at each end which are attached to a frame so that the bell and its headstock are free to swing backwards and forwards. There is also a wheel attached to the headstock, and a rope attached to the wheel. The rope passes over one or more pulleys to the bell ringer who stands below. By pulling on the rope, the bell and its headstock can be made to swing. And, rather like pushing a child’s swing, the bell can be made to swing through successively greater arcs by timing the pull on the rope to coincide with the movement of the bell. Similarly, by timing the pull slightly differently, the bell can be made to swing in smaller arcs. In “full-circle ringing” the arc through which the bell swings is almost a full circle, first in one direction (known as “hand-stroke”) and then in the opposite direction (known as “back-stroke”).

Full circle ringing animation Inside the bell there is a free swinging clapper that can strike the inside rim of the bell, causing it to sound. The clapper is designed so that it will strike the bell once each time the bell rotates and this happens about ¾ of the way through its rotation. It takes about 2 seconds for a bell to swing from “mouth up” position to “mouth up” position, and so there are about 2 seconds between successive blows of the clapper on the bell. However, by careful adjustments to the pull on the rope, the ringer can cause the bell to swing through a slightly smaller or slightly greater arc (but not more than a complete circle) and this in turn causes successive blows of the clapper to occur at a slightly quicker or slightly slower rate.

Change-Ringing

Change-ringing is the music that is rung on bells hung for “full-circle ringing” as described above.

A set of bells, (called a “ring” of bells) is normally tuned to form the notes of a major scale, and commonly comprises 5, 6, 8, 10 or 12 bells. For the purpose of this explanation, examples are given for 6 bells. These normally form the lower 6 notes of an octave, but instead of being referred to by their musical note, the bells are numbered from 1 to 6 (or 1 to 8, or 1 to 10 etc.) with 1 being the highest-sounding note. With one ringer for each bell, they can all be rung full-circle, one after another from the highest note to the lowest, with a constant time gap between each bell.

So, in the (approximately) 2 seconds it takes between successive strikes of a particular bell, all the other bell can ring in turn as follows:

Rounds on 6

Ringing the bells in order down the scale like this is called ringing “rounds”. The pause marked in this diagram is usually introduced to make it easier for the ringers to hear the sequence of the bells, and is called the “hand-stroke gap”.

Obviously, to create any kind of music it is necessary to ring the bells in different orders, but, due to the inertia of each moving bell, it is not possible to make any bell sound twice in quick succession, and so it is not possible to play conventional tunes. However, by making small changes to the amount of rotation of the bells, the ringers can cause the time interval between successive blows of different bells to vary just enough for two bells, sounding one immediately after the other, to swap places. It is this successive changing of the order in which the bells sound that is called change-ringing (and is also the origin of the common expression to “ring the changes”).

Rows and Changes

The order in which the bells sound is written as a “row” of numbers, so rounds is written

123456

another row is

213456

and another row is

231456

In fact there are 720 possible rows on six bells i.e. there are 720 different orders in which the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 can be written.

When different rows are rung, there is a “change” in the order in which the bells sound. And, if the ringing progresses through a sequence that starts and ends in rounds, with no rows repeated, there will be the same number of rows as changes.

Producing Changes

This is done by swapping adjacent pairs of bells. Ringing always starts with rounds, where the bells ring in the order:

123456

If 4 and 5 are swapped, so that they change places with each other, the following row is produced:

123546

If 2 and 3 are now swapped, the following row is produced:

132546

And if 2 and 5 are now swapped, the following row is produced:

135246

This row, ringing first the odd-numbered bells then the even-numbered bells, is generally thought to sound pleasing, and is traditionally known as “Queens” (or sometimes “Thirds”).

Call Changes

Call changes are a way of achieving exactly what was illustrated above, by having the change called out by the conductor (one of the ringers who takes charge of that piece of ringing). There are several ways this can be done, but a common one is as follows. To produce the first change the conductor calls “4 to 5” (i.e. telling bell number 4 to follow bell number 5 instead of the other way round). When this new row is being rung, the conductor calls “2 to 3”, and then when that new row is being rung, he calls “2 to 5”. If the calls are made every hand-stroke, the effect is as follows:

123456.123456 123546.123546 132546.132546 135246.135246

Method-Ringing — Plain Hunt

An important rule for change-ringing is that only adjacent pairs can swap position with each other. In the above example, only one pair at a time was changed, but on 6 bells there are three adjacent pairs that could be swapped, i.e. 1&2, 3&4, and 5&6, and there is no reason why they should not all be swapped at once. So, it is possible to go directly from the order

123456
to
214365

If the three pairs 1&2, 3&4, and 5&6 are swapped again, then we return to rounds, but in method ringing the general aim is to ring different rows without repeating any of them. One way to get a new row from 214365 is to leave the first and last bells (2 and 5) in the same place and swap the internal pairs 1&4 and 3&6 to give:

241635

We can then swap all the pairs again to give:

426153

and then swap only the internal pairs to give:

462513

This process, of alternately swapping all the pairs and then only the internal pairs, can be repeated for every row that the bells are rung, and this defines a change-ringing “method”. This is the simplest method and is called “Plain Hunt”. So, starting with two rows of rounds, the result is as follows:

123456.123456 214365.241635 426153.462513 645213.654321 etc.

If we write out the bell numbers in one line as above, in the order they sound, it is not very easy to see what is happening, so what bell-ringers normally do is to write each row on a separate line, as shown below:

Plain Hunt on 6 It can now be seen that Plain Hunt on 6 bells comes back to rounds after 12 changes. The conductor would have his work cut out if he tried to call all these changes for every row, so all he does is call “go Plain Hunt”, and the ringers, who all know how Plain Hunt is constructed, control their individual bells to ring sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, in order to swap with an adjacent bell, and ring the changes.

But ringers don’t ring by thinking about which pairs are swapping, because there is an easier way of thinking about it.

Plain Hunt on 6 Looking at bell number 1, we can draw a line through all the “1”s and see that initially it goes from left to right, and then it goes from right to left. All that the ringer of this bell has to remember is the shape of the line and what it means. Specifically, the ringer has to remember whether the line is going from left to right (called “hunting up”) or from right to left (called “hunting down”) or straight down, such as when the bell is last in the row for two successive blows (this happens for bell 1 halfway through and is called “lying behind”) or is first in the row for two successive blows (this happens for bell 1 at the end and is called “leading”).

In fact, if a line is drawn through the number corresponding to any of the bells it will be found to have the same shape as that for bell 1, but with a different starting position. For example, by drawing a line through all the “3”s it will be seen that this bell hunts up to the back of the row, lies behind for two blows, hunts down to the front, leads for two blows, then hunts back up to third place in rounds.

Hunting Up and Hunting Down

Still looking at bell 1, we see it is ringing at the front of the row in rounds, then in second place in the next row, then third, then fourth, then fifth, then at the back of the row in sixth place. This is called “hunting up”. When ringing rounds, the other five bells ring between the successive blows of bell 1, but when hunting up there are six bells between the successive blows of bell 1:

Hunting up

When bell 1 has reached the back of the row, it stays there for a second blow (with the other five bells between these successive blows). In the next row it rings in fifth place, then fourth, then third, then second, and then it leads. This is called “hunting down”, and when hunting down there are only four bells between the successive blows of bell 1. When bell 1 reaches the front of the row (i.e. it is “leading”), it stays there for a second blow (with the other five bells between those successive blows) and the bells come back into rounds:

Hunting down

There is only one way that bell 1 can leave room for six bells to ring between its successive blows when hunting up, and that is to ring slightly more slowly than it does in rounds. Similarly, with only four other bells ringing between its successive blows when hunting down, bell 1 must ring slightly more quickly than it does in rounds.

So, there are three possible speeds that bell 1 can ring: the speed in rounds, the slower speed, and the quicker speed. And the same is true for all the other bells. Plain Hunt is the simplest method but, no matter how complicated the method, there are always only these three possible speeds. The only thing that is different with more complicated methods is that changes in speed can occur more frequently.

Bell animation

Hunting up.
Slower than rounds speed – the bell swings higher than in rounds.

Bell animation

Same place.
Rounds speed.

Bell animation

Hunting down.
Quicker than rounds speed – the bell swings less high than in rounds.

Method-Ringing — Plain Bob

We have seen that by alternately swapping all the pairs of bells and then only the internal pairs, each bell will plain hunt, and that 12 of the 720 possible rows will be rung before the six bells come back into rounds (go back and revise plain hunt if you are not sure about this). It is also useful to note that when only the internal pairs are swapped, one bell leads for two blows (hand-stroke then back-stroke) and another bell lies in sixth place for two blows (hand-stroke then back-stroke)

Plain hunt lead end Plain bob lead end A simple method for producing more of the 720 possible rows is to introduce a slight variation when the “Treble” (bell 1 is usually called the Treble) comes to lead again (called the “lead end”). In Plain Hunt, the sequence would be to cross the internal pairs, leaving the first and last bells (bell 1 and bell 6) to stay where they are for two blows, which produces rounds as shown previously. However, if we leave the first and second bells (bell 1 and, in this instance, bell 3) where they are, and cross the remaining pairs, we get a new row instead of rounds, namely 135264.

This method is called “Plain Bob”. More precisely, it is Plain Bob Minor to signify that it is being rung on six bells (Minimus signifies on four bells, Major on eight bells, Royal on ten bells, Maximus on twelve bells).

If we examine this new row (135264) it can be seen that only the Treble (bell 1) has returned to the position it occupied in rounds (i.e. leading) while all the other bells are in a different position. In fact, the order of the remaining five bells has rotated, so comparing this new row with rounds:

Bell 6 is in the position that was occupied by bell 5
Bell 5 is in the position that was occupied by bell 3
Bell 3 is in the position that was occupied by bell 2
Bell 2 is in the position that was occupied by bell 4
Bell 4 is in the position that was occupied by bell 6

The sequence 5 3 2 4 6, which can be seen immediately above, recurs many times in change-ringing.

Plain Bob long line

Plain Bob Minor is shown in full on the left. When the Treble comes back to lead after the first 12 changes, we get the row:
135264 as shown above.

Continuing for another 12 changes, and we get:
156342

Do it again and we get:
164523

then:
142635

and finally:
123456

So, instead of coming back into rounds after 12 changes, Plain Bob Minor comes back into rounds after 5 × 12 = 60 changes.

As with Plain Hunt, ringers learn Plain Bob by drawing a line through the number corresponding to one of the bells and then remembering the shape of the line. For the Treble, there is nothing new to learn because it rings Plain Hunt as before. For the other bells there is a new line to learn, but the shape of the line is the same for each of the other bells – they just start in a different position.

On the left, you will see Plain Bob Minor written out in full with a line drawn through the path of bell 2. Ringers learn the shape of this line by noting that it is, essentially, Plain Hunt except when the Treble leads. At this point one bell stays two blows in second place while a “dodge” is made by the other bells. A “dodge” is the term used to describe the line or path of a bell “stepping backwards” for one blow and then continuing its previous direction.

The sequence 5 3 2 4 6 mentioned above can be seen in the figures for Plain Bob. If you look at the order in which the bells come to the back of the rows (come into sixth place), it is the order 5 3 2 4 6 but with the Treble appearing somewhere in this order. This is a useful piece of information for the ringers (and the conductor) to help them keep right.

Ringing All the 720 Possible Rows

Plain Bob Minor, as written out on the left, produces only 60 rows, but this can be extended by introducing temporary alterations to the method.

 124365
 123456

Plain lead end
One bell rings
two blows in
second place

 124365
 142356

Bobbed lead end
One bell rings
two blows in
fourth place

As shown, the very last change can be altered, so that instead of going from the row 124365 to 123456 a new row 142356 is produced. What has happened is that while the Treble leads for two blows, instead of one bell (in this case bell 2) staying in second place for two blows (and the other pairs swapping), a different bell (in this case bell 3) stays in fourth place for two blows (and the other pairs swap).

This alteration to the lead end is announced to the ringers by the conductor calling “bob” just before the lead end, and the effect is to rotate the positions of bells 2, 3 and 4. Ringing Plain Bob without any “bobs” called, is referred to as ringing a “plain course”, whereas ringing with bobs is referred to as ringing a “touch”. By choosing where to call the bobs (and thus which bells are affected by the bobs), the conductor can call touches of Plain Bob Minor of differing lengths up to a maximum of 360 changes.

This can be doubled to obtain 720 changes (and all the possible 720 rows without repetition) by introducing another call “single”. When “single” is called, then while the Treble leads for two blows the bells in second, third, and fourth places all ring in the same place for two blows (and the remaining pair swaps).

 124365
 124356

Singled lead end
Bells ring two blows in
second, third and fourth places

Want More on Plain Bob Minor?

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What Next?

There are many more methods beyond Plain Bob, but the main aim here is to provide basic information for the non-ringer and beginner. Once you have started to learn to ring your teacher should be able to tell you about books and leaflets that are available. There is also masses of information on the Internet and a good place to carry on from here is The Pimlico Learners’ Page.

Click here for a comprehensive list of other change-ringing links.


Peter Blight, November 2009
last updated 4th February 2023

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