Bells of St Mary's Cathedral

Bells of St Mary's Cathedral The St Mary's Basilica Society of Change Ringers (est. 1844) ring and maintain the bells at St Mary'

St Mary's Cathedral has a peal of 12+2 bells in the key of C # major, located in the central tower. The current peal is the third set of bells in the history of the Cathedral and was cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London in 1985. The bells range in weight from 281 kg to 1741 kg (or 34 cwt). They are the heaviest peal of 12 bells hung for change ringing in Australia. The bells are rung and main

tained by the St Mary's Basilica Society of Change Ringers. Formed in 1844, this is the oldest ringing society in Australia.

Last weekend ringers from St Mary's Cathedral, and some friends, went on an outing to Singleton and Maitland. We were ma...
01/04/2025

Last weekend ringers from St Mary's Cathedral, and some friends, went on an outing to Singleton and Maitland. We were made very welcome by the Singleton ringers and the local authorities at Maitland (sadly there is no local band there at the moment).

We started our day at Wahroonga at the start of the day so we could hit the M1 easily and start the trip up north. Despite the rain everyone enjoyed the day out, and it was great to be able to help out at Singleton with the local ringers.

On Saturday 18 March some of the ringers from St Mary's Cathedral went on an outing to visit other bell towers, this tim...
18/03/2023

On Saturday 18 March some of the ringers from St Mary's Cathedral went on an outing to visit other bell towers, this time south of the city. We were made very welcome at Bowral Uniting Church, St James Anglican Church Menangle, St Paul's Parish, Camden and Ingleburn Catholic Church. It was an enjoyable day where we got to ring with some local ringers at each of the towers, some who haven't had visitors in over 3 years.
Here are some of the St Mary's Cathedral ringers with some of the ringers of Holy Family Catholic Church, Ingleburn.

On Australia Day we had our first tower tour in 3 years. Two groups were able to come up and see us ring, and also get a...
18/03/2023

On Australia Day we had our first tower tour in 3 years. Two groups were able to come up and see us ring, and also get a chance to go up to the bells and see them in action.
Afterwards four ringers were performing handbells in the Cathedral body in front of a number of interested onlookers.

Today we farewelled one of our own. John Fryer passed away last week and today was his funeral, held in the Cathedral. I...
23/04/2021

Today we farewelled one of our own. John Fryer passed away last week and today was his funeral, held in the Cathedral. It was well attended and we rang half muffled before and after the funeral, with handbells rung in the body of the Cathedral.

There was a deafening silence over St Mary's this morning before 10:30am Mass, as the ringers couldn't get into the ring...
21/03/2021

There was a deafening silence over St Mary's this morning before 10:30am Mass, as the ringers couldn't get into the ringing room! The wooden door to the central tower has swollen shut after several days of solid rain. This is as far as we could get.

07/06/2020

Today we rang our bells for the first time since the lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. We observed physical distancing where practical, and made sure our ringing room was a safe environment. We are currently limited to only having 10 ringers in the room at any one time, but hopefully when the restrictions relax some more we will be able to ring on 12 again.
We did some maintenance and checks on the bells yesterday to make sure everything was okay for us to resume ringing today.
Here is a video of the opening rounds on the heavy 10 which was the service touch before the 10:30am Mass.

The bells of St Mary's Cathedral continue to ring. Here we are waiting for Mass to finish before entering the Cathedral ...
19/03/2020

The bells of St Mary's Cathedral continue to ring.

Here we are waiting for Mass to finish before entering the Cathedral for practice, after the 100 other parishioners who were allowed in had left.

We are very happy to see each other and ring together on our wonderful bells.

Today was the unveiling of the memorial plaque to John (Jack) Cummins, who passed away in 2016. The plaque was unveiled ...
01/09/2019

Today was the unveiling of the memorial plaque to John (Jack) Cummins, who passed away in 2016. The plaque was unveiled by the Dean the Very Rev Don Richardson and with two of Jack's children, Damien and Virginia. After some moving words by ringers and family Fr Don Richardson then blessed the plaque and some handbells were rung.
Family and friends of Jack's children were present, along with ringers who knew Jack. We celebrated his life with a special bit of ringing on the tower bells before showing his grandchildren the bells while his children reminisced about their time up in the tower.
We were glad to mark Jack's life and importance to the tower with those who knew him, and it was quite apt for his children that it was done on Father's Day.

Well, congratulations to our colleagues at The Bell Tower Home of the Swan Bells Perth: you've achieved fame as one of t...
20/01/2019

Well, congratulations to our colleagues at The Bell Tower Home of the Swan Bells Perth: you've achieved fame as one of the questions in a Sporcle quiz! Keeping company with some pretty impressive landmarks...

01/01/2019

Happy New Year to everyone!
The ringers at St Mary's had our usual New Year's Eve practice last night. As has become custom on these special practices, we "fired" the bells as the last bit of ringing we do to ring out the old year. This involves trying to get all the bells to sound almost simultaneously, which is difficult to do. Here is a video with the last bit of firing as we ended our ringing for 2018.

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College Street
Sydney, NSW
2000

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