Sam Austin's comment on Tina's article about the state of handbell ringing, which he linked to the recent Ringing World article about the declining number of ringers, prompted me to compare the numbers of handbell and tower bell peals during the period covered by PealBase (1950-present). Why peals? Just because...

One difference between tower bell ringing and handbell ringing is that a tower bell has its own momentum and rhythm, but a handbell doesn't. On handbells, all of the rhythm has to be created by the ringers. We have to start at the right speed, absorb the rhythm of that...

That's a difficult question to answer. Who should we try to count? Everyone who can ring plain hunting on a coursing pair? Everyone who can ring Plain Bob Minor from the trebles or tenors? Everyone who rings handbells regularly?

Instead we can answer an easier question: how many people have...

Quite a long time ago, I produced tables of the most popular methods for handbell peals of Major, Royal and Maximus, which showed that although Yorkshire Major is more commonly rung than Cambridge Major, the preference is reversed on higher numbers.

Just for fun, here are the five...

Andrew Craddock has added a fascinating new feature to PealBase: stage leaders. That is to say, the people who have rung the most peals at each stage (Minor, Triples, Major etc). At the time of writing, PealBase data goes back to 1952, so older peals are not included in...

Here is the Top 20 list on 12 bells, again from 1954 to 2010 with data from www.pealbase.co.uk. The usual comments apply to Spliced and Spliced Plain.

Here is the Top 20 list for 10-bell handbell peals from 1954 to 2010, based on data from www.pealbase.co.uk. The comments about Spliced vs. Spliced Plain, from the 8-bell post, also apply here.

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...