The Bells …. The Bells

Countryside column  28 February

The Bells …. The Bells

It may be not be true, but it’s such a good story I’m going to retell it anyway.  A few years ago a couple left the city for peace and quiet in the countryside. They bought a charming house at the top of our village green right next to the church.

All was well until after the first week-end. The vicar received a call the following Wednesday evening, just as practice had started.  Please would he put a stop to the awful noise of the church bells? 

At first he thought it was a joke, but it soon became clear the newcomers were serious.  Pointing out that they had bought a house next to a bell tower and so might expect to hear them rung occasionally made no difference. Further complaints followed to the environmental health department. Eventually, whether because of jeers of villagers or the sound of the bells or both, they upped and left.

A recent appeal for new bell-ringers here reminded me of the tale.  St George’s has a magnificent ring of 12 bells, unique for Kent churches outside Canterbury Cathedral.

But participants are in such short supply that it is common for only 4 or 5 to be rung on a Sunday.  Which is a bit of a tragedy for ‘Tower Captain’ Rod Lebon who campaigned and fundraised tirelessly to augment the previous octave of bells. But ringers seem in increasingly short supply. “The youngest now is over 50,” he told me, “and it’s a demographic time bomb.  You must have younger brains to learn art of method ringing.”

Apparently it all starts with a “round”, then you are told to alter the order of the round through “call changes”,  but the real skill is “method” ringing when you effectively programme yourself to remember the changes.  And since your ultimate goal, a full “peal”, has 5000 changes, that requires some serious concentration and ability.

But neophytes shouldn’t worry. After an induction, it’s a weekly commitment of just an hour’s practice and half an hour’s ringing on Sunday. Later you can even earn money by ringing for weddings.

And according to Rod my story was apocryphal, at Benenden anyway. “Here we had the opposite issue.  One neighbour phoned the vicar to complain she couldn’t  hear the bells during practice so we had to open the shutters in the tower to let the sound out!”