Please get in touch with us to arrange a free trial lesson. This will hopefully allow you to decide if it is something you want to pursue further.

For bell handling lessons no prior experience is necessary, you just need to be reasonably active and be able to climb the 38 steps of the spiral staircase up to the ringing room!

A lot of learning to  handle a bell is about building muscle memory, which takes much longer to achieve if there are large gaps between lessons. We find the best way for people to learn to ring is to schedule regular 1:1 lessons initially, ideally 2 or 3 times a week, so that your learning is quickly consolidated. We will try to arrange mutually convenient times for this. 

Once ringers reach the required standard and can handle a bell independently they will be expected to attend the weekly practice with the rest of the band on Tuesday evening and ring for Church services on a regular basis. 

If you feel unable to make the commitments outlined above  please discuss this with us before you start handling lessons.

No, not at all. Bell ringing is open to everyone of any religion or none. 

We do however hope that all the ringers we train will help out ringing for weekly Sunday service  and other special occasions once they have reached the required standard, as this is the payback we give to the Church for them allowing us to ring their beautiful bells.

We ask people to make a donation after their free trial lesson, which will cover their 1:1 bell handling lessons.

Our teachers are volunteers who give their time for free, but these donations enable us to make a regular donation to the Church towards the  maintenance of the bells we use, to contribute to the School's and Church's running costs and make an annual donation to ART to support their work.

Please contact us for more information.

No.

Ringers do like to go and ring at other churches (‘towers’) and when doing so it is normal for the visitor to leave a small donation to help with maintenance. We anticipate that visitors to the school will follow this convention too.

When experienced enough, you may be asked to ring at weddings, and then you will usually receive a small payment.

It depends. Ringing really heavy bells can be hard work. But you do not have to do that. It is much more about timing, technique and practice. To start with you will be ringing on quite small bells, which do not require much effort; in fact you may need to be careful not to pull too hard. It can be quite a climb to the ringing room in some churches, and very few have lifts! There are 38 spiral stone steps to the ringing room at St Anne's Parish Church.

No. Your feet should not leave the floor. One of the first things you will learn is the importance of letting go as soon as your teacher says so. Properly taught, ringing is a very safe activity.

Once you have learned to handle a bell safely, we will encourage you to join the local band of ringers and to attend one or more practice sessions on a weekday evening as well as to ring for service on Sundays.

No – there is no music in the conventional sense, and you do not need to be able to read music.

No, you just need to be able to count to 10!

However we do find that some people who are good at maths find it easier to learn more complex methods as they spot the patterns and the symmetry in the method more easily.

Yes. The Association of Ringing Teachers (ART), was set up to provide some assurance about the quality of teaching in ringing. You will be taught by someone who is either an accredited teacher, or someone who is working towards accreditation and will be under the supervision of an accredited mentor.

ART has a scheme called ‘Learning the Ropes’ which follows a series of 5 levels, from basic bell handling to the early stages of change ringing. You will be offered the opportunity to register with the scheme if you want to (it's free!) which means we can award cetificates to mark your progress.

For each course we will list the prerequisite skills for those wishing to apply. To get the most out of the course you need to have these skills already.

We aim that our courses will have no more than 4 students, so that everyone gets lots of rope time.  (We will have experienced helpers on each course so that the student can have a solid band around them and someone stood behind, which we find really accelerates the student's learning.)

We have a small charge for courses which enables us to cover the costs of running the courses, to make a regular donation to the Church towards the  maintenance of the bells we use and to contribute to the Church's running costs and make an annual donation to support the work ART do. (There is no charge for the actual tuition, our volunteer teachers give their time for free.)

Please contact us for more information.