29/01/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1BjBi15sYp/?mibextid=wwXIfr
IN PRAISE OF CAMPANOLOGISTS
By Rev’d Dr Tim Keen – Vicar
Edit: Please note that a previous picture attached to this post has been removed for safety reasons. Somehow, the Parish Administrator managed to run it through an AI - supposedly to enhance it - but that ended up with the handling of the bells being depicted in an unsafe manner. We apologise, and offer this picture of our illustrious Ringing Band taking a break between Grandsire Triples (whatever they are).
-Tim
One or two of our Facebook followers have asked us to educate the general public on the benefits and pleasures of Bellringing (known by those who like to pretend they studied Latin as ‘campanology’).
I had intended to ask our Tower Captain, Mrs Maureen Clapperton, to pen an article for our new page, but (in common with most bellringers I have experienced) she scarpers out of the West door at precisely the moment when the service starts – with a speed normally associated with the last call for bets on the 2.30 at Aintree. So somehow, I never seem to catch her. Maybe this article from your favourite local Vicar will suffice? My own Father was a bellringer, so I kind of see their contibution from both sides.
Let us begin by addressing the most persistent complaint about bellringers, usually voiced by parishioners with children who live within earshot of the church. “Why,” they ask, “do the bells always, *always*, bang on for two hours on a Thursday evening? Have you ever tried to get a toddler to sleep with eight half-ton lumps of resonant metal clanging away outside the window? And another thing,” they often emote, “why is their ringing so awful on Thursdays?”
That’s always a *very* useful question. It opens up a line of defence which I’ve often employed. I let the enquirer understand that Thursday night is practice night – and bellringing takes years to do really well. As to the timing of their practice, and the volume in their child’s bedroom, I try to tactfully ascertain the approximate date that the said enquirer moved into their dwelling. It doesn’t really matter what their answer is, though. My reply is always the same: “Well, what did you expect when you acquired a house next to a medieval church with a dirty-great tower full of bells on it, specifically designed to make a noise?”
On the matter of volume, I have been educated (by Mrs Clapperton) and have learned that bells are not “loud”. They are “well struck”. Any suggestion to the contrary is evidence that one has not yet cultivated a sufficiently robust Anglican inner ear. The fact that the entire nave vibrates like a passing freight train is neither here nor there. “They were louder in 1897,” bellringers will say darkly, as if this settles the matter.
Complaints *by* bellringers are, however, even more plentiful and much more passionately held. Foremost among them is the curious tendency of clergy (I'm told, frequently) to alter service times without consulting the tower – often with the vague optimism that everyone else will simply “adapt”. A bellringer regards a last-minute liturgical adjustment as a personal affront, on a par with moving someone’s organ pipes or re-ordering the hymn numbers in pencil. Bells, you see, are rung according to an intricate web of tradition, practice nights, peal boards, quarter peals, half peals, and things called “touches”, which sound reassuring but are not. None of this may be disturbed lightly – or indeed at all.
There is also the perennial grievance that “nobody appreciates how difficult it is”. Bellringing is widely assumed by outsiders to involve pulling a rope at roughly the right moment and hoping for the best. In fact, it is a highly technical exercise involving rhythm, mathematics, memory, teamwork, and a degree of physical bravery. A bell can weigh more than a small car, and it is controlled entirely by trust, timing, and a strip of rope that looks as though it was last replaced during the reign of Queen Victoria – and possibly nicked from the rigging of HMS Victory.
Then there is the tower itself. Bellringers inhabit a parallel universe above the nave, accessible by spiral staircases designed to discourage the faint-hearted and the arthritic. They will cheerfully tolerate draughts, dust, bats (allegedly), and mysterious buckets of indeterminate purpose, but draw the line at anyone storing Christmas decorations in *their* space, alongside their fridge, their teapot, and their bottle of emergency port, with some dusty glasses. (This, I should emphasise, is brought out only for moments of extreme success or mild disappointment. Ringing while intoxicated is no longer tolerated, even in the most liberal of tower. The prospect of a ringer being pulled like a reluctant sausage through the tiny hole in the Ringing Chamer ceiling is too horrible to contemplate). “That’s the ringing chamber,” they will say, as if naming a sacred site.
And yet – complaints aside – what a gift they are. Bellringers are among the most faithful, if least visible, servants of the church. They turn up early, practise in all weathers, and mark the great moments of parish life with sound rather than spectacle. They ring for joy and for grief, for weddings and funerals, for feast days and Remembrance, for reasons known only to themselves (such as the anniversay of the sinking of a ship they once sailed in to the Falklands). Occasionally, they ring for for no apparent reason at all except that it is Thursday – and Thursday is ringing night (an important fact which toddlers have yet to fully appreciate).
They ask very little in return. A working clock. A roof that mostly keeps the rain out. A vicar who remembers to tell them what the Christmas services schedule will be, without having to be asked. And perhaps the courtesy of not scheduling a baptism rehearsal directly underneath them while they are attempting something fiendishly complicated in seven.
So, the next time you hear the bells and wonder why they have started “now”, or why they sound “like that”, spare a thought for the campanologists in the tower. They are not trying to disrupt worship, nor be an annoyance to the Village. They are, in their own rope-burned, stopwatch-timed, fiercely traditional way, doing exactly the same thing as the rest of us: offering their skill, their time, and occasionally sacrificing their hearing, to the glory of God and the life of the parish.
And if you ever wish to thank them in person, do act swiftly. Most of them will be gone by the opening chords of the first hymn.
-Tim
Revd Dr Tim Keen
Vicar
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Disclaimer: St Faithful’s is a fictional parish, imagined by a real-life parish priest. It reflects familiar church cultures, observed with affection and humour, in the belief that theology still has something to say. Images are created with the assistance of Artie Fishal, who is very intelligent.
We recommend books by Canon Tom Kennar, including his recent publication of some of OUR Facebook posts (called 'The Parish life') which can be purchased (by 'print and deliver' service) at www.books.by/tom-kennar. Or search for 'Tom Kennar' on Amazon (especially for Kindle editions)
