Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes with the Bell-ringers

Certainly we are not visible while ringing, but you can all hear us. Those who have read Dorothy Sayers' detective story "The Nine Tailors" will know that bells can be too loud, so the "ringing chamber" is two floors below the belfry.

The Church website has a description of the bells (and the inscriptions on them) and you can click on a button to hear a recording of them in action. The booklet "Bell Ringing and other things at St Giles' Church Oxford" by Philip Walker (tower-captain from 1954 to 1982) is available in the Church.

We have eight bells forming an octave in F#, varying in weight between 4cwt and 13cwt. They hang in an oak frame (with a small iron extension) and are safe when hanging mouth down. We ring them by swinging them until they are mouth up and they then swing back and forth through a full circle one way and then a full circle the other way. Each clapper hits its bell towards the  end of its swing, so we hear our bells some time after we pull the ropes. We can ring the bells in a descending octave, but usually keep varying the order of the bells - ringing the changes. We try to avoid repeating any particular order and there are various different "methods" of doing this with arcane names like "Stedman Triples", "Plain Bob Doubles" and even "St Giles Surprise Major".

Much depends on the skills of the band of ringers. They must first learn to control their bells as they swing and it takes some time to learn this control. Then they need to learn methods, which vary in complexity. A learner who has mastered a method is then made to learn another so we are all learners. Our oldest learner recently celebrated his  90th birthday and three slightly younger learners rang handbells at his party. We have one other ringer over 80 who only started to learn in her seventies after belated retirement from paid employment. We have a number of seventy-year-olds as well as students and working people. Our ringers include an Estonian and two Australians. Twelve of us are members of the Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell-ringers and we usually have two or three people learning from scratch.

On Thursday evenings we teach people to handle the bells (silenced by tying the clappers to stop them moving) from 6.30pm to 7.30. During this time some of us practise hand-bell ringing with two bells each. At 7.30 we untie the clappers and ring until 8.45pm in "touches" of about five minutes at a time with a variety of methods depending on which ringer is learning which method. We often have visitors from other towers - some from Oxford and some from elsewhere in Britain or from other parts of the world. Indeed when our ringers go on holiday they frequently call in at other towers and receive hearty welcomes.

On Sundays we ring in the morning and evening and on the first Sunday evening of the month we ring continuously for about forty minutes with about 1260 different changes - known as a "quarter-peal". Once or twice a year we will attempt a full three-hour peal of five thousand or more changes (with the heaviest bell always last there are exactly 5040 different orders on the other seven bells). We also ring for weddings. Visiting bands may come to ring our bells for an hour on a Saturday and we sometimes go on visits to other towers.

It is now forty years since we had a major overhaul ("rehanging") of our bells. It would cost about £30,000 and we think that we could raise this sum, though we would welcome donations. The PCC is considering this request.

If anyone would like to come and see the bells and us ringing, please let us know. I must warn you that access to the ringing-chamber is up a steep set of stairs and access to the bell-chamber up a vertical ladder. We do not always have enough ringers to ring all eight bells, so we would welcome new recruits.

Dermot Roaf, Tower Captain

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