For Whom The Bell Tolled (1 April 1977)

When I was a boy in Yorkshire, I lived practically next door to the village church.  It was a big building with a high tower, but it had only one bell, albeit a very sonorous one.  The sexton rang the bell at certain regular times.  If it sounded at any other time, it almost always meant only one thing – somebody in the village had died.  The question then was: who?  The bell literally “tolled” us.

First it tolled us whether the departed was a child, a woman, or a man, in that order.  Three tolls for a child, two sets of three for a woman, and three sets of three for a man (no complaints of sex discrimination in that respect).  A pause followed the designation.  Then the bell began tolling the person’s age.  If the age was over 20, there was a pause after the 20^th toll and so on, with a pause after each 20 until the age was reached.  Finally, the designation was repeated.

In a place where everybody knew everybody else, and who was seriously ailing, everybody had a shrewd idea of the identity of the deceased.

That was known as the passing bell, but in reality it was the death knell.  The true passing bell that was universally known for hundreds of years previously, was rung as soon as it was judged that the soul was about to leave the body, whether by day or by night.  Still, the effect was similar. A hush came over the village while it was being sounded as Anglican and Methodist alike paused to spare a thought for the departed and for the bereaved.

I soon became aware that some smaller, but vastly older churches in the vicinity had not just one bell, but even as many as eight – a full octave, in fact.  Yet the bells rang only one at a time, any harmony or disharmony being apparently accidental.

Eventually, I discovered that this was known as change ringing and that a “peal” did not consist of any old ring-o’-bells.  Roughly speaking, it consisted of ringing all or most of the possible changes in a certain prescribed order, called the “method.”  And those methods had most intriguing names – such as “grandsire triples” and “treble bob major”.  Moreover, the methods had composers, arrangers and transcribers.

Years later, when I came to North Bucks, with its comparative multitude of ancient churches and belfries, the late Mr Harry Sear (of which more anon) showed me some bell music.  It is the only music I know in which the lines run vertically down the page instead of from right to left – takes after the towers, you might say.  To deal with this, each band of ringers has a conductor, who is also one of the ringers.

So change ringing is an art in its own right and not an easy one at that, although the ringers themselves take great pleasure in mastering it.  In addition to peals, there are quarter peals and “touches”.  The bells can also be rung “muffled” or “half-muffled” according to the occasion.  But the pride and joy of every bellringer is to take part in a full peal, although this may demand over three hours’ concentration.

It needs only one slip, say, in the last ten minutes, for the whole attempt to be written off as a failure.

But pride in achievement is not what makes a church bellringer “tick”, as today’s slang puts it.  There have always been very many devoted ringers, especially in the smaller belfries, who have never thought of attempting a peal in their lives.  For what motivates all ringers, we can, perhaps, best go back to origins, say to the year 1500, when many towers began being equipped with bells in fours or fives.

In those days the most common Englishman was a tough, uneducated but more or less God-fearing agricultural labourer or peasant.  He loved his village church, alike as a place of worship, a place where he could see and hear beautiful things, and a place where – unlike the village pub – he could enjoy the fellowship of all his neighbours, regardless of sex or age.  He had an urge to do something for the church. He probably could not sing well enough to be in any choir that might have existed, he probably could not play an instrument, he had no head for figures and so could not aspire to be a churchwarden or anything like that.  But there were those bells in the tower that told people it was time to be going to church and that rang at Christmas and other festivals.

Yes, that was the job for him all right, for as long as he had the health and strength to do it.  Besides, it would make a pleasant change from the never-ending ploughing, sowing, reaping, mowing, and the back-breaking bean-picking, with only the angelus bell rung by the priest or sexton to tell him when the day’s toil was over.

As in 1500, so in 1977, to a great extent.  True, the yokel has become a lawyer, a businessman, a railman, or anything else you like to mention.  True also that modern mechanism has made ringing physically so easy that young women and mere boys are taking part in full peals in this district, but the motivation remains basically the same.

There have been only two periods in English history when bellringers have not been allowed fully to ply their art.  The first was during the Commonwealth, when ringing was banned by the Puritans; the second was 300 years later, during the 1939-45 war, when it was ordered to (be) used only as a signal that the country was being invaded.

I hope to continue this story of the bells next week with special reference to St. Mary’s, Bletchley, which is one of the two towers in North Bucks that have a full octave, the other being St. Giles’, Stony Stratford.

Footnote found in More Notes from the Belfry:

….I inadvertently wrote that St Mary’s and St Giles were the only eight-bell towers “in North Bucks,”  I should have written “in the new city.”  There are several such towers in North Bucks which are not in the new city.