Campaign seeks to get all of Britain's 38,000 church bells ringing for King's ... trends now

The ringing chamber in Southwark Cathedral — 130‑odd steps up a spiral stone staircase, along an impossibly narrow walkway, and through a door barely wide enough for a fully-grown man — is a vaulted, whitewashed, wood-panelled marvel.

Inside, I find electric fans, giant vats of drinking water, bottles of liquid chalk (to improve grip) and at least 15 bell-ringers, of all ages — all raring to pull on their sallies and ring away.

Hang on a minute — 15? Isn’t there a national bell-ringer shortage — a crisis in campanology? Haven’t we been hearing in recent weeks how the wonderful Ring for the King campaign — to have every church bell, all 38,000 of them, ringing across the land in a glorious cacophony of sound to mark the May 6 coronation of Charles III — has hit the buffers, due to lack of recruits? And that, as a result, up to 8,000 dusty bells will stay silent.

Well maybe this is true in some areas but, happily, there’s no shortage here at Southwark Cathedral in London.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more vibrant, multi-generational, dynamic and — yes, now I look closer — impressively muscular crew. Or, for that matter, a more wonderfully uplifting sound!

Fresh from work, university lectures or the pub — the ‘pre-practice pint’ is almost as popular as the ‘post-practice pint’ — they all dump their rucksacks and cycling jackets, strip off their woollies (it’s hot work) and grab their ropes.

But before they start ringing, a stern safety warning: this can be a dangerous business. The bigger bells here weigh more than two tonnes, and a loose rope could easily noose a stray ankle and whip you into the air like a rag doll.

‘Both feet on the floor at all times, please’ is the bell-ringer’s mantra.

Calmly, in a very particular order, they must be rung smoothly and in sync with each other, and never, ever, by a total amateur like me — who, ideally, should have at least 15 hours of one-on-one training before being let loose on a decent-sized bell.

So, while I am allowed to ‘help’ toll the D-bell (which weighs over a tonne and was cast in 1834) with Tom, 38, also hanging onto the rope for dear life, they were never going to let me actually ring it.

For the uninitiated, tolling — slowly producing a repeated sound from an already hanging bell at a measured pace — is different to ringing, hoisting an inverted bell off its plinth and causing it to ring in a flurry as it swings down and, if not handled properly, takes out everything in the belfry in its way.

There’s also a bell-ringing glossary to swallow. Instead of tunes, they play ‘methods’ — patterns of notes which, on paper, resemble a print-out from an excitable heart-rate monitor.

Each section of practice, called a ‘touch’, is led by a different conductor and, collectively, the ringers are called the ‘band’, all under the authority of the ‘tower captain’. Today’s captain is a youthful chap called Luke, who started during the big ringing push for the Millennium and became hooked.

Bell towers, meanwhile, are referred to by the number of bells — so Southwark is a ‘12 bell’. Many local churches are just six. St Martin in Birmingham’s Bull Ring is at the top with a staggering 16.

Oh yes, and actual tunes are impossible. ‘You can’t have repeats of the same note, because you can’t hurry up a two-tonne bell,’ explains Tom, who has been ringing since he was 11.

So far, the campaign has received a disappointing number of enquiries through its official site, which must be giving organisers the heebie-jeebies — though they’re hoping new recruits are getting involved independently through their local churches.

But the worry is that, while in Central London this practice is rammed with a cross-section of ringers ranging from their mid-20s to late 70s, the belfries in rural areas are increasingly falling silent. Bell-ringers have faced some serious challenges over recent years. Many tower rooms were closed for two years during the pandemic. They are, after all, often claustrophobically enclosed spaces in which ringers do an awful lot of huffing and puffing.

Even when many first reopened, every other bell was lopped out to comply with social distancing — playing merry hell with the methods. As a result, a lot of older ringers stayed firmly away.

Which is a crying shame, because while the various terminology is a bit of a mouthful, and the tower steps are often rather steep, bell-ringing is surprisingly good for the soul — as I discover the moment I start pulling on my sally and, after a

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