Doug Nichols stood in the ringing chamber of St David’s Cathedral, Hobart, on May 1, 1996. As he held the rope for one of the heavy bells upstairs in the belfry, he took a deep breath, and began to ring it slowly and solemnly.
Below in the main part of the cathedral, crowds filled the pews. Outside, another crowd filled the grandstand seating in Murray Street and masses of people crowded the intersection of Macquarie and Murray streets.
The bell continued to toll. Nichols rang it 35 times, once for each person who had been killed in the Port Arthur massacre a few days previously. At the end of the memorial service he was joined by the rest of the band, and together they rang all eight bells.
Although the numbers of people attending church nowadays is much lower than it used to be, the sound of church bells ringing still evokes something deep in many of us. We associate it with times of grief such as funerals and the memorial service for the Port Arthur massacre, and times of great joy such as weddings.
Hilary Fawcett, a resident of Lindisfarne and originally from England, is another member of St David’s band. She remembers being part of the Oxford band in England when Winston Churchill died. “We rang a peal at Carfax Tower, Oxford, which is almost never open to bell-ringers … but it was the city’s tribute to Winston Churchill”.
A peal is about three hours of continuous ringing with one person to each rope. It requires a great deal of concentration and stamina.
Originally, church bells were rung to call people to church in an era when there weren’t watches or phones, and few clocks, to tell the time.
During emergencies they also rang the alarm on the bells. “At the time of the armada in England,” Hilary Fawcett tells me, “bell-ringers were instructed to be in their towers along the south coast of England ready to ring the bells as soon as the first ship was sighted. So its uses have always been partly secular and partly religious”.
The method of ringing the bells at St David’s cathedral is known as change-ringing, a form of bellringing that is particularly English. For centuries bells were hung on a simple spindle. All that was required was a rope attached to the spindle to sound the bell. As bellringing evolved from the 14th century onwards, the attachment first of a quarter wheel and then a half wheel allowed the ringer to pull the bell through an increasing arc with more control. Then a whole wheel was attached, which allows the bell to go through a complete circle and gives the bell-ringer total control over the timing.
As Doug Nichols puts it, “The bell reaches the balance point at the top of the arc and you can hold it there for a fraction. Once you’ve got that control over timing, you can create change-ringing. This is where you’ve got to be very precisely slotting into a pattern which keeps changing all the time.”
The bells vary in tone and semi-tone (from very heavy bells to relatively light ones), creating a normal musical scale so they can be rung in different ways. The number of changes possible depends on the number of bells. With four bells, there are 24 possible permutations, or changes. With six bells it’s 720, and with 8 bells it’s 40,320, which would take about 24 hours to ring.
Bellringing was for many years a traditionally male activity but in 1959 a new dean arrived at St David’s. He recruited a number of young women to join the somewhat diminished band. Ruth Brammell was one. She is now the longest-serving Tasmanian bellringer and the oldest member of the team.
People come to bellringing from all walks of life and for a variety of reasons, but crucially you don’t have to be a church goer (most bands are a mixture of church goers and secular ringers). Both Hilary Fawcett and Doug Nicholls began as teenagers in England, where there are more than 5,000 towers. Nicholls started because his best friend at school was starting; Fawcett because she fancied one of her older brother’s friends who happened to be a bellringer. No romance eventuated with the bellringer, but she fell in love with bellringing and has been doing it ever since.
In Australia we have about 70 towers of which Hobart has two, St David’s and Holy Trinity Church, which has Australia’s oldest surviving ring of bells, installed in 1847.
Learning to be a bellringer takes time, like learning to play any musical instrument, but it’s a rewarding experience. St David’s is keen to enlist new bellringers and will teach anyone who is interested and keen to learn. You don’t need a musical background but a sense of rhythm is desirable. The band practises once a week on a Monday night and ring the bells for Sunday morning services, weddings and other special occasions.
If you are interested, or for more general information, see www.hobartbellringers.org.au.
Pen Tayler is a Tasmanian writer and photographer. She photographed 12 towns for Towns of Tasmania, written by Bert Spinks, and has written and provided images for Hop Kilns of Tasmania. She is currently working on a book about Prospect and Belmont houses, Coal River Valley.
