Ringing History and Future Trends
Richard Johnston's lecture:
Presentation slides:
Version for reading and printing on A4
Notes
Call changes:
In the lecture, and in the materials below, I did not sufficiently distinguish the difference between Devon style call changes, and the much more ancient - and more widely spread practice - of calling bells out of rounds into what were termed "set changes", such as Queens, Whittingtons and the like.
Newspaper evidence for Devon call changes, in which a systematically well ordered pattern is rung, cannot be found before theC19. Newspaper reports of striking competition ringing everywhere in the C18 appears to have been rounds.
"Set changes" on the other hand are mentioned in the earliest ringing treatises, such as Stedman's Campanalogia, and seem likely to have been a precursory to method ringing. Whilst newspaper reports of method ring peals are abundant, later there is little reference to set changes. However there is little or no record of what grass roots ringing, undertaken by lower class paid ringers, actually consisted of. Much of it was probably rounds, and perhaps set changes.
Set changes were long insisted on by the church authorities for the ringing of London's Bow bells, as the tower built after the Fire of London was considered unsafe for method ringing. Bow bells, ringing in that style, were recorded by the BBC in 1926, and was used as a regular time-filler long after WW2.
The motives for founding the Oxford University Society
It has been objected that the founding of the Oxford University Society was not to promote belfry reform. I agree that does not appear to have been an explicitly stated objective. I would suggest it did not need to be, as it was implicitly presumed by the founders. Troyte, who seems to have been the driving force behind the foundation of the OUS, was certainly a major driver in the Belfry Reform movement which soon after resulted in the formation of the Guild of Devonshire Ringers and the Oxford Diocesan Guild. For some twenty or thirty years previous to the founding of the OUS, reform minded clergy had sought to interest Ordinands at Oxford University (then the main source of CofE clergy) in bellringing as a means of belfry reform. The constraints of time within the lecture made it impossible to tell this nuanced story.
Background materials
Questions published in Ringing World - with answers
Summary of English Religious History - the background for ringing development
Ringing History Revolutions - detail analytical tabulation of major impacts on ringing
A proposal for a secular body for performance bellringing
A Note by John Thurman on the Governance of Darts
Prize Ringing at Milverton, Somerset 1890
This was the sort of ringing Belfry Reformers wanted to stop.
Interestingly Milverton (then a 6) was already a method ringing tower, as this 1891 peal (i.e. extents on 5,6, & 7) board shows
Milverton Ringers' Rules (1906)
Ringers are paid a salary
Milverton Belfry Rules (undated but between 1920 and 1940, when Rev Henry L Maynard was vicar)
Note the ringers are paid a salary, from which fines for being late or absent are subtracted.
Devon Association certificate 1929 awarded to Highweek, Devon
- value of prize is now the trophy worth £30
(Devon Association founded 1924, originally for rounds ringing)
All materials (c) Richard Johnston, 2016.
Source material - a selection from my extensive collection
Some Background sources
More Historical sources
A recommended book on social background to ringing, particularly interesting, not least because it is written by a non-ringer. (Most histories of ringing by ringers are obsessed with details of individuals, peal events and don't look at the broader social context, and what ringing meant to outsiders) I made extensive use of this:
Bonfires and Bells David Cressey, 1989. 2004 edition by Sutton History Classics.
RHJ, 2016, 12.5.2020
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