[Bell Historians] Tower Classification required

[John Harrison john@jaharrison.me.uk [bellhistorians]]

In article
<CAMOjYUNQpAjv4OW3ZaHWhMvfRBPN-zPgqAf6CBRTtLdEycuXPg at mail.gmail.com>,
   alan Buswell aaj.buswell at gmail.com [bellhistorians]
<bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> Ringing World and Dove say that these publications are for 'Church Bell
> Ringers'. 

That is because (a) most of the bells of interest are hung in churches (b)
the church took over ringing 150 years ago and many of our institutions
have inherited the language used.  In practice, 'church bell' is used as a
synonym for 'tower bell' and in particular 'tower bell hung for English
style ringing'. 

> In my annual Q.P. reports is a list of towers that lead their county.

If one wanted to focus specifically on church service ringing then it would
seem more logical to categorise by diocese or some other ecclesiastical
grouping.  However it is questionable whether that would be of interest
since recreational quarter peals almost certainly outnumber those rung for
services.  It would also be impractical since neither BellBoard nor Ringing
World makes a distinction unless the footnote happens to mention it. 

If one wants to focus on quarter peals as a whole, the majority of which
are not rung for services, then there I can see no reason for excluding
quarter peals rung on bells not hung in active churches, including
'secular' towers or mini-rings (or handbells, which account for ~7% of
quarter peals)

** As a crude estimate of the fraction of quarter peals rung for services
(ie church ringing rather than recreational ringing) I looked at two weeks
of BellBoard reports.  36% were rung on a Sunday.  Not all of those will
have been for a service, and some of those rung on other days of the week
may have been rung for a special service.  I also looked at the footnotes
of several dozen quarters on a specific Sunday (~50% mentioned a service)
and on a specific Tuesday (~6% mentioned a service).

-- 
John Harrison
Website http://jaharrison.me.uk


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Posted by: John Harrison <john at jaharrison.me.uk>
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