How Bells Work

English-Style Full Circle Ringing

This website focuses on English-Style Full Circle Ringing.
Click here for other types of ringing.

Each ring of bells (set of bells) is housed in a belfry, and the room with bells in is the bell chamber.
The bells are supported by a bellframe.
Each bell is hung from a headstock which pivots on gudgeons/bearings.
A wheel is attached to the headstock.
The rope goes around the wheel and then down through a pulley, through one or more floors (and sound insulation where needed) and into the ringing chamber below.
Bellringers ring the bells from the ringing chamber or ringing room.
When the rope is pulled, the bell swings.

Bells are normally left hanging downwards, called down, and must be rung up so they are upside down, called up, so they can be rung.

To ring a bell up, the rope is repeatedly pulled so that the bell swings higher and higher and, as it does so, more rope is drawn around the wheel.

A wooden strut called a stay is fixed to the headstock, and when it engages with a horizontal slider below the bell, it will prop the bell upside down when it is up. When a bell is set up, it is stood.

The rope is attached to the spokes in the centre of the wheel, and goes onto the wheel rim through a garter hole, which is positioned at about 2 o’clock on the wheel. This means that the rope is pulled up less one way round, and more when the bell swings back. This produces 2 ringing strokes called handstroke and backstroke.

The woolly part of the rope is called the sally. The ringer pulls the sally at handstroke, and lets go of it as it is pulled up, holding onto the end of the rope, called the tail end. The ringer pulls the tail end down again at backstroke, and catches the sally again at the next handstroke.

The Treble bell has the highest note (and is usually the smallest and lightest bell), and the Tenor bell has the deepest note (and is invariably the largest and heaviest bell).
The ringer of the treble will call, ‘Look to, Treble’s going, she’s gone‘ *, and start ringing, with the other bells following in quick succession from the Treble to the Tenor, so they ring down the scale, called Rounds.
From Rounds, the bells can be called into different changes, either by swapping one pair of bells at a time in Call Changes, or by continuous swapping, such as in Methods, which is Change Ringing.

Bells’ Names and Inscriptions
* Like ships, bells are traditionally ‘female’, even if they have names like Emmanuel, Great Peter, Little john or Big Ben, and some have female names like Elizabeth.
Some bell names are more descriptive like the Jubilee Bell or The Ringers’ Bell (one of Duffield’s new bells).
Many bells have no actual name, but most have inscriptions including the bell founder and date, sometimes benefactors, and maybe further inscriptions such as DOMINE. DIRIGE NOS (on Old Brampton’s Treble).

Muffles

For Funerals and Remembrance Sunday, you may hear bells ringing half-muffled.
A leather cap, called a muffle, is strapped to one side of each bell’s clapper.
This makes the mournful loud-soft sound, traditional for remembrance.