The Most Popular Handbell Methods on 8

Submitted by simon on

Originally Posted on October 12, 2011 by Simon

Here are the Top 20 methods for peals on 8 bells. This time I have not combined the spliced peals quite as much as I did for the 6 bell table. The categories of spliced are a little unclear, because they come directly from PealBase’s summary table and I haven’t looked at the peal reports themselves. I think Spliced Major probably includes a lot of peals of Spliced Plain and Little Bob, but it also includes, for example, peals of Spliced Bristol and Double Norwich. Very likely there are also peals of Plain and Little in the Spliced Plain category. Spliced Treble Bob, on closer inspection, is almost entirely in 2 methods, and I’m betting that almost all of these are Kent and Oxford.

Rank Method Peals %
1 Plain Bob Major 3350 30.6
2 Kent Treble Bob Major 1248 11.4
3 Spliced Surprise Major 1099 10.1
4 Yorkshire Surprise Major 824 7.5
5 Cambridge Surprise Major 530 4.8
6 Oxford Treble Bob Major 458 4.2
7 Bristol Surprise Major 411 3.8
8 London Surprise Major 327 3.0
9 Lincolnshire Surprise Major 263 2.4
10 Spliced Treble Bob Major 243 2.2
11 Grandsire Triples 221 2.0
12 Stedman Triples 216 2.0
13 Superlative Surprise Major 185 1.7
14 Spliced Plain Major 182 1.7
15 Rutland Surprise Major 165 1.5
16 Double Norwich Court Bob Major 153 1.4
17 Pudsey Surprise Major 127 1.2
18 Spliced Major 110 1.0
19 Little Bob Major 75 0.7
20 St Clement’s College Bob Major 73 0.7

I stopped at 20 for consistency with the 6 bell table, but I can also reveal that Glasgow comes in at number 21 and Belfast at number 24.

 

I don’t think there are any big surprises in this table. Even if all kinds of spliced are combined, they are still a long way behind Plain Bob Major (but ahead of Kent). It’s interesting that in the annual breakdown, the preference for Yorkshire over Cambridge only became clearly established in the 1970s.

Handbell Statistics
Major (8 bells)