If you live in a village, it is quite likely that your local church may have just six bells. Once you have learned to ring the bell in full circle, the next step is to ring ROUNDS (where the bells follow each other down the scale to the lowest note ie 1,2,3,5,6). The lightest bell is called the ‘treble’ and the heaviest the ‘tenor’.

Then you are taught to ring CALL CHANGES where you are told to ring after a different bell to the one with the next higher note than yours. After you have mastered this, the next step is to learn METHOD or CHANGE RINGING. Each CHANGE represents one sequence of the bells ringing once each ie 1 3 2 5 4 6.

On six bells you can ring 720 different CHANGES (ie 1x2x3x4x5x6 = 720). On seven bells this number increases to 5,040 and the early change ringers (in the early 18th century), decided that this length of ringing non-stop should be called a PEAL. As churches normally had an even number of bells in their towers, they rang with the tenor (or 8th bell) ringing at the end of each change.

On the right is an example of the initial changes in Plain Bob Triples.

Here is a peal board that hangs in the ringing chamber at Winchester Cathedral. It is dated 1895 and records the first peal rung by the Winchester Diocesan Guild of Ringers.

They were all of at least 5,000 changes, and had to be rung without stopping. Most peals on church bells take at least three hours to ring non-stop, and sometimes nearly four, on the Cathedral’s heavy bells!