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LyndenleaBell Ringing
In November 2021, after almost 29 years I decided to withdraw from ringing church bells.
My primary motivation for this decision was to finally extricate myself from the church, but my failing health – which had already caused me to drastically reduce my
ringing activities and give up nearly all of my other voluntary rôles – was also a contributing factor.
My "retirement" from ringing was never going to last long, however, and within just four months I had purchased a miniature bell-frame complete with ringable weighted wheel (and a papier-mâché bell, although I already had other plans for that) and constructed a makeshift tower from IKEA shelving components. Eventually, after three years, a protracted house-move and more than two years in storage, I was able to complete the set-up and "rang" my bell for the first time on 8th March 2025, the 32nd anniversary of my very first bell ringing lesson.
Find out more about My Bell Tower at Lyndenlea, including its origins and construction, and some of the ringing I've performed on it.
I first started learning to ring tower bells at the church of St James, Mangotsfield in Gloucestershire on 8th March 1993, nine months after their bells were recast. I was just nine years old at the time, an age which is still considered to be young to learn to ring. Since that time I've had the great pleasure of ringing a lot of very different bells all over the south-west of England – plus a few in Wales and some interesting examples in the Midlands – and established myself as a regular ringer at a number of local towers. I also enjoyed visiting other towers, both nearby and further afield, where I always received a warm welcome. Take a look at My Ringing Career to find out more about what I used to get up to. You'll also find here details of all the special Bell Ringing Performances in which I've taken part.
I have occasionally found myself writing Articles about tower bell ringing for non-ringing audiences. As these articles are no longer available elsewhere and could be of continued interest, I have republished them here.
My dad Colin has recorded some of my ringing over the years, although I'm pretty sure he was more interested in dabbling with digital audio than recording bells. If you want to listen yourself, a few recordings can be found on his Colin's Audio Odds 'n' Ends web page.
Archived projects and research
In July 2003 I created the Bristol Rural Tower Locator. This amazing feat of programming was almost a year old when I
moved it from my old personal website onto its very own "Lyndenlea Bells" site in May 2004, and despite being retired in April 2006 (not to
mention largely redundant), for many more years it did a fine job of providing driving directions between 22 towers in the Bristol Rural Branch of the Gloucester &
Bristol Diocesan Association of Church Bell Ringers. Some of the directions are now inaccurate following changes to the road network, but it remains in working order as
a curiosity and museum piece.
For almost two years the Bristol Rural Tower Locator fulfilled an additional task of providing detailed information on each of its towers, but when in April 2006 I decided to concentrate my efforts on researching towers and bells, not only in the Bristol Rural Branch but also in some of the neighbouring branches, that rôle was delegated to the Local Tower Information section. As my research continued I crawled around all sorts of dark and dusty belfries to compile a detailed survey of more than sixty towers around Bristol and Bath.
More recently I split that section into two, creating the Lost Rings section to host all of my research into bells that have been either removed from their original tower, or simply rehung for chiming (and therefore lost to the art of full-circle ringing).
Following my withdrawal from ringing church bells in November 2021 I am no longer updating these research projects.