17 Dec 2016

Ring my bells!

From This Way Up, 12:15 pm on 17 December 2016

One of the oldest forms of mass communication – after smoke signals but before Snapchat – was the tradition of ringing church bells to signal what was happening in your neighbourhood.

The bells marked births and deaths, wars, feasts and marriages, a bit like a community noticeboard or a newspaper in the good old days before the printing press and the internet.

The bells of St Bees Priory England shown in the up position. When being rung they swing through a full circle from mouth upwards round to mouth upwards and then back again (Dougsim CC BY SA 4.0)

(Pixabay Public Domain)

Cutaway of church bell (from William Henry Stone Elementary Lessons on Sound 1879 Public Domain)

Bellringers' chamber in tower of St Michael and All Angels Church Beckwithshaw North Yorkshire England (Wikipedia user Storye Book CC BY 3.0

Bell Patterns (By Dr clave (talk) (Uploads) Own work CC BY-SA 3.0)

Members of the Wellington Combined Society of Bellringers (Simon Morton)

The First Church in Dunedin is reputed to be the southernmost bell tower in the world (By Luke Chapman on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

The Bell Ringers by Henry Ryland (Public Domain)

Saltaire United Reformed Church Bell ringing practice in Bradford. England (Copyright philld and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Royal Sigismund Bell in Krakow.Poland was cast in 1520 and weighs nearly 13 tonnes (Jorge Láscar CC BY 2.0)

Trevor the bell (Simon Morton)

Even with uncapped broadband plans and free wifi to get the latest global updates, people are still ringing bells here in New Zealand! In fact, the country's featuring on bellringing bucket lists, with Dunedin having the southern-most bell tower in the world.

That's just one of the surprising things Simon Morton discovers on a visit to the Wellington Combined Society of Bellringers.