At Barrow upon Soar, there is a long-term relationship between scouting and guiding groups and our church bell tower to provide experience visits for groups of young people to see what bell ringing is about.  Through the passage of time, the points of contact and responsible people on both sides invariably change.  As a result, when an email from our local Beavers colony leader forwarded by the vicar, landed in my inbox (as churchwarden and a ringer) back in April, neither of us had any real experience of what these visits really were comprised of.  However, along with our tower ringing master Andy Boston, we quickly figured out a plan.

We decided that with around 20 young people coming on the visit, along with their leaders, we would need to split them into three groups of six or seven and have just one of those groups up the tower at any time with the rest in the church doing other activities.  Thinking about the practical aspects of a safe visit, we decided to keep all the bells down so that the young people could try safely chiming a bell, but to explain about how a bell works using a small model of a bell in a frame, equipped with a stay / slider, wheel and rope.  We also decided that the experience of learning about bells would be enriched with exposure to handbells and these were a great way to explain change ringing away from the exciting distraction of the tower bells.  In the end, we decided on two handbell ‘stations’ at opposite ends of the church along with the tower bells.  One of the hand-bell stations would focus on playing traditional music on the bells, while the other would be used to explain method ringing.  We also decided on getting the whole group sat down in the church at the start of the session for a quick, fun, briefing – both on health and safety aspects but also to introduce what a bell is, how it works and some fun facts about our tower bells.

The evening finally arrived, and six slightly apprehensive volunteers awaited the arrival of 20 excited Beavers.  We got them seated and quickly went into a quick, energetic and fun presentation that explained where the bells are in the church, where we go to ring them and some fun facts and figures about the bells themselves such as how old they are and how heavy they are.  We decided that units such as “kg” or especially “cwt” don’t mean a lot to youngsters in explaining how heavy a bell is, so we decided instead to get 5 of the Beavers to stand up and explain that this was the weight of the lightest bell called the ‘treble’ and we then got a further 11 of them to stand up and explained that 16 of them was the weight of the heaviest bell called the ‘tenor’.  All the bells together weighed about the same as 83 Beavers – or the same as an adult white rhinoceros! We explained that the oldest bell (cast. 1620) is older than many parts of the church itself but rather than something that old and precious gathering dust in a museum, we still use it weekly; these are fascinating facts to young minds.  A quick video of full circle ringing and a brief reminder to not run and take care on the tower stairs, and off into groups they went.

One of the handbell groups focussed on ringing simple tunes, with each of the youngsters having a chance to get their bell to ring, then to follow some simple “music” to ring a recognisable tune.  They learned how smaller bells have a higher pitch than larger bells.  The other handbell station had each of the group issued with a handbell and stood in a row where they rang the bell once from one end to the other in rounds.  Then, they were swapped in outer and inner pairs before ringing a single row again, repeatedly until they had rung plain hunt and back where they started.

Up in the tower, we had the group sit on the benches as they came into the ringing room and asked if any of them played a music instrument and knew what an octave was.  A simple explanation that in our eight-bell tower, the treble and tenor are the same note, an octave apart, was well understood by the musical youngsters.  We chimed each of the bells (tenor to treble) so they could hear the “scale”.  We then demonstrated how we wanted them to try and chime the bell and had them come in pairs to have a go on bells 1 and 3.  We left a gap so they weren’t in each-others physical way, also because it would sound slightly better and they would be able to hear their bell.  We used the lighter bells, 3cwt (5 Beavers!) as these are ideal for smaller people to try chiming, which as a we all know is harder for a first timer than it looks!  A volunteer, holding the rope tail end, stood in front of the young person while they took a firm grip on the sally and got the bell swinging.  Most of them understood the idea of then “checking the bell” although this phase doesn’t mean anything to non-bellringing folk so it’s better explained as “pulling back against the rise of the sally before it reaches the high point”, or some words like that which make sense.  Some of the lighter young people struggled to have enough weight of their own to get the bell to chime, so a little assistance from the helper to get the first strike of the clapper might be required, with hands above the young persons’ on the sally, is all that is required.  In particular, it was important to the youngster’s that they knew they were the ones making the bell chime with minimal help.  Once they get the bell chiming is a good time to tell them how many people or houses nearby can hear the bell they are chiming – this would either embolden them to become more enthusiastic with their chiming or in a couple cases, stop and look worried!

The session passed quickly, and they all left even more excited than when they arrived, comparing notes of who had made the bell ring the loudest or how many people had heard their ringing!  By far, the tower bells leave the greatest impression but the handbell experience, we hope, sets more into their young minds to reflect on afterwards about ‘what’ is being rung, in addition to just ‘how’.

Within a couple of weeks requests from two further groups in the village, the Cubs and the Guides, came in and by October we’d run three of these sessions.  Except for the Guides, the Beavers and younger Cubs are on the lower limit of teachable ages so we don’t expect immediate recruitment of new learners from these groups but hope that the experience will remain with them, and some might consider coming to a practice night in the future.

If you have a tower which has these kind of scouting and guide movement groups meeting nearby, do consider running an experience session for them like this.  It’s great engagement with the community and the investment might lead to recruitment immediately or in the future.  Things to think about if you do organise a session, are to start with a clear risk assessment for the proposed activities, which must include clear safeguarding considerations acceptable to both the church and the scouting or guiding group.  Engage the support of your PCC and especially consider that your volunteers should have at least undertaken foundation safeguarding training.  Next, make a clear timing plan and define roles and responsibilities for the session.  Time taken for climbing/descending stairs is often more than expected and the young people will need to finish on time with parents waiting to collect them, so ensure you stick with the plan so that the final group don’t have a short session in the tower.

We’ve slowly been building up the band again at Barrow and continue to think about how to recruit new learners. Looking forward to 2025, what have we learnt from the sessions we ran this year?  Well firstly, to make a rich experience for an exciting visit,  we would perhaps allow more time for a longer visit.  We expected that a short 90 minute visit would be enough for the youngsters before they lost interest and felt it was going on for too long, but they found it such an engaging and interesting subject, as well as the variation in the stations, that it could easily have remained engaging and fruitful for two hours. Next, with that little additional time, engage the leaders and volunteers that come with the young people, they are likely like-minded individuals invested in community endeavour and enjoy being challenged – ideal bellringers – plus the young people will enjoy seeing their leaders have a go too and their attempts to chime a bell!  Finally, to reach out, rather than wait to be asked by the various groups for young people, we could contact them and offer a bell ringing experience session.

Overall, this endeavour has been positive and rewarding for all concerned, as well as engaging young people with the church building – the bellringer volunteers especially enjoyed showing and explaining bells to the young people.  It’s a great opportunity to recruit, especially from groups of youngsters aged ten and above.  Even with younger visitors, sowing the seeds of this interesting and challenging activity is worthwhile. 

If anyone is interested in a further discussion about running a session like this or would like to see some of the materials prepared for the sessions, then please do get in touch.  Let’s get engaging and recruiting in 2025!

Jez Bowman