Bells
Welcome to St James’ Bell Ringers
We are the people you only see occasionally but you hear every Sunday Morning & Evening & possibly Wednesday evenings if you live nearby, the Bellringers. The art of Bellringing in the English style goes back to the 1600’s and churches can have any number of bells up to 16 hung in the belfry, but usually have 6, 8, 10 or 12 bells. St James’ has 6 bells, the treble is the lightest at 4 cwt and the tenor is 10 cwt. The third bell is protected by the National Historical Society as the bell was cast in 1588 the same year that the Spanish Armada was fought.
People who learn to ring, first of all learn to handle the bell. They learn to control the bell by raising the bell so the mouth of the bell is up and then lowering the bell so the mouth is down. Once this is mastered then we start to learn to ring in rounds and controlling the bell to stay in our place and then from there we progress on to method ringing. These methods can be rung on any number of bells, the more bells you have, the more complex the method becomes. We use a little red book called Standard Methods which gives us the basic composition of that method. There are 720 different combinations in which six bells can ring. When we ring for a special occasion we will often ring a quarter peal, which is 1250 changes of the bells & takes approximately 45 minutes to ring. As Bellringers we are all members of the Ilchester Branch of the Bath & Wells Diocesan Association of Change Ringers. The Branch & the Diocesan organise social events and as a Tower we do try and take part in these events such as skittles evening and striking competitions.
Bellringers do tend to talk a different language with bobs & singles, falling off the line, sallies and tail ends to name but a few. However it is a good social activity, in St James’ we organise our own outing to other churches once a year to ring their bells usually 6 towers in a day. Ringing is good exercise and it keeps the brain cells ticking over remembering your blue line!