St Margaret's Church - Barking, London, UK - Bell Towers on Waymarking.com

St Margaret's church bell tower was added in the late 1400's and houses a Peal of 8 bells.

The local paper's website , The Barking and Dagenham Post, carried an article about one of the church's bell ringers:

Bell ringer Andrew Bond has composed chiming tunes at the oldest church in Barking, St Margaret’s, for more than a decade. The ringing master leads a 12-strong group that appeals to musicians aged eight to 80, including his nine-year-old son Alexander. Here, the bell conductor initiates POST readers to an art perfected on our shores since before the English civil war.

I began bell ringing in 1998 through Clive Bryant, who was already learning to ring and with whom I had been friends for many years.

He suggested I go to one of the Thursday night practices in the tower with him, just to see what was going on.

I did and I was struck by the ability of all the ringers to make such beautiful music with what looked like, and are, such unwieldy tools – the bells.

We have the good fortune to be allowed to play these instruments whenever we wish. What more could one ask for?

Bell ringing, or change ringing as we ringers term it, is an activity that is both ancient and modern. Though there are bells in many churches throughout the world, most are rung in an imprecise and disordered fashion.

This is because they are not hung as ours are and are not capable of being controlled to any great degree.

The ringing of bells by rope and wheel is unique to Great Britain, with a total of over 5,000 towers in the British Isles. There are also approximately 500 towers spread across the rest of the world, mostly in Commonwealth countries.

Ringing as we know it has been practised since the 16th century in a way that is little changed from those times.

Indeed, it could be said that were a ringer from that time to enter a tower now, he would immediately understand what was going on and moreover would be able to join in.

Bells hung in the way that ours are do not allow the playing of tunes or music, however they can ring patterns which are tuneful and musical.

These patterns are called methods and are composed in just the same way as a piece of music.

Methods have been composed for hundreds of years. One of the oldest is Grandsire, which means grandfather in Old English.

Robert Roan, who was a Londoner, composed this in the 1600s. He was a ringer and a member of the household of King Charles II.

The number of bells to be found in a tower vary from four to 16, though the most common number is six, closely followed by eight, which is the amount of bells in the tower at St Margaret’s, in the Broadway.

Our heaviest bell weighs three quarters of a tonne. This is roughly equivalent to the weight of a Ford Mondeo. The heaviest bell hung for change ringing is the tenor at Liverpool Cathedral, which weighs more than four tonnes.

One person can ring this bell and you don’t have to be hugely strong to do so.

In most bell towers, there will be one ringer to ring each bell, so if you hear eight bells being rung, the chances are that there are eight ringers ringing them.

Ringing is a pastime both the young and the old can take part in. My oldest son is nine and I am teaching him to ring.

Our most senior ringer is over 80 and regularly rings the heaviest bell. I have yet to find another form of exercise which two people with a 70-year age gap can take part in and do equally well.

Ringers come from all walks of life – lawyers, teachers, mechanics, even train drivers like myself. All are equal in the tower.