Joanna Dyson

The commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings on Thursday 6th June starts with a national ringing of bells, of which St Mary’s tower will be a part.

This will be followed on Saturday 8th June with a striking competition involving the Witney and Woodstock branch of bell ringers. It will last from 5-7pm in the evening, when you will be able to hear some of the most precise ringing our tower has yet to produce! If your wondering what the competition rules are and what’s involved take a look at: Black Bourton Striking Competition Rules.

From the announcement of her death until the late Queen’s funeral our bells were rung half-muffled. Muffles are leather pads (see picture) fitted to a bell’s clapper (see picture) to reduce the volume. They attenuate the bell’s strike note whilst retaining the hum. By only muffling the clapper on one side (half muffled) you get an ‘echo’ effect as blows are alternately loud and soft. In Rounds it’s like a normal descending scale followed by an eerie echo of that sound. Some churches ring full muffled, where two muffles are fitted, one on each side of the clapper, but if we did that at St Mary’s you’d hardly hear the bells. Muffling involves David Harding getting in amongst the bells to secure each of the six clappers. For safety reasons, muffles are always fitted and removed with the bells down – i.e. can’t be rung.

Our bells were rung at noon on the day of announcement of the Queen’s death. They remained half-muffled until the day that the Palace proclaimed the new Monarch, Charles III.  At that point the muffles were taken off in celebration of the accession.

We then reverted to ringing half-muffled until the day of the state funeral. On the day of the funeral, we rang for half-an-hour prior to the time of the Funeral Service. The picture records those involved.

If you’d like to join our merry band of ringers, then do get in contact with David or Becca Harding direct or by using the contact form.

So what is a quarter peel? St Mary’s has six bells  (see the refurbishment of our bell tower in 2017 under ‘In our time‘). We ring them from the lightest bell (Highest Note – Treble – bell 1) to the heaviest bell (Deepest Note – Tenor – bell 6).  We start off ringing them in order 1 2 3 4 5 6,  these  6 rings are counted as 1 change.  We can then change the order of the bells, but each bell can only move one place.  Depending on how many bells are moving (known as working bells) will determine the possible number of changes you can have before you start repeating the sequences. Before a sixth bell was added, St Mary’s had five bells, which would have meant a total of 120 unique changes. Just adding one bell takes this to 720 possible changes. If there are eight bells (as in St Stephen’s Clanfield) the total possible changes are 5,040! This is the number that makes up a full peel, which takes three hours to ring. For us to ring a full peel on six bells means ringing the 720 possible changes 7 times. A quarter peel is a quarter of 5,040 – in other words, 1,260 changes. This will take approximately 45 minutes.

It’s a wonderful sound so do listen out on Tuesday 8th February starting at 2pm and on Sunday 27th February starting at 5pm before the evensong service.

… And if you’d like to have a go and join our merry band of ringers then do use the contact form!