[Bell Historians] Number of ringers

[Richard Johnston]

On 2 May 2026 at 15:56, John Harrison wrote:

> In article <69F5E934.11275.AB4B7D05 at johnstonrh.rhj.org.uk>,
>    Richard Johnston via Bell-historians
> <bell-historians at lists.ringingworld.co.uk> wrote:
> > Clearly, including people who chime, rather than ring, is going to be
> > an issue in the 1930 returns for all dioceses.  
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > I don't see any special reason for assuming *this* issue applies more
> > in Exeter diocese than elsewhere.
> 
> I didn't.  I merely thought that different information gathered via a
> different route might explain an unexpected result.
> 
> > John's original comparison was between Exeter and Oxford & Bath &
> > Wells.  My core point is that that the Guild of Devonshire Ringers
> > memberships don't represent a good estimate of the numbers of ringers
> > either in 1930 nor now.  Those other Guilds' figures did and do.
> 
> Agreed, which is why I added the GDR and DA figures to get an equivalent
> modern comparator.  Or does Devon have more (full circle) ringers who
> aren't a member of a ringing society?  

In my initial post I said that was certainly the case to a large extent in 1930.  

But it isn't the case now.  This page gives a list of the affiliation status of Devon towers:

https://www.devonbells.co.uk/index.php/tower-information-2/

This gives some idea, and certainly there are still some towers that I know are actively ringing 
but not affiliated.

> 
> I realise the DA affiliation makes that a difficult question to answer but
> is there reason to believe the nominal 600 is not a fair estimate of the
> number of ringers in DA towers?

I imagine it is as good as they can do.

Today GDR has many towers & ringers who do only rounds and call changes but that was definitely not 
true in 1930 because of the membership entry level qualification.

Towers can be members of both GDR and DA as shown in the list above and quite a number are - these 
are usually where a primarily GDR tower enters DA competitions.  Towers that are in both tend to 
have more members ( especially Exeter Cathedral with over 30, most oif whom are also members of 
another Devon tower).

There are people who haven't reached a standard considered suitable to join GDR, even though there 
is no longer a formal rule.

> 
> > The 1930 diocese figures from everywhere make a better comparator if
> > you want to compare Devon with elsewhere than using Guild figures. 
> 
> I assumed that Coleridge's figure was based entirely on diocesan
> information, not that he was comparing ODG membership with church data
> from elsewhere.  

Yes I presume that too.

> Had he been one of us he might have compared ODG
> membership to the diocesan figure and tried to explain any difference, but
> was he that sort of person?

If we have figs from the Oxford diocese in 1930 comparable with Exeter's should it not still be 
possible to tot up the figures from ODG annual reports to see how they compare?

> 
> > That's the point.  There are no comparable figures for 2026 available
> > that can compare Devon with elsewhere.
> 
> I would put it the other way round.  There are no 1930 figures to compare
> with the present day figures we have (for ringers not chimers, etc) 
> 
> > ===============
> 
> > *Today* for towers with 5+ bells, tenor >2cwt (no minirings etc)
> 
> > Exeter 371
> > Bath & Wells 340
> > Oxford 361
> 
> > Devon is ahead in tower numbers, 
> 
> That's interesting.  But tower numbers are a poor proxy for ringer
> numbers.  All my analysis has been based on towers with ringers.  ; 

They are certainly a poor proxy today, but perhaps less so in the past, and especially in Devon for 
the village life reasons I cited.

> 
> > and may have been relatively rather more so in 1930, as I suspect 
> 
> > > Is Richard claiming that Exeter Diocese really did have more ringers
> > > (in the sense we mean it) than Oxford Diocese in 1930?
> 
> > Yes.  I think that is entirely possible, indeed more than probable,
> 
> That's interesting.  But what about today?

I don't know, as I don't know how well ODG is doing now.  Devon village ringing is in trouble, and 
many such bands have died out. Many more bands struggle and depend on visitors.

> 
> > provided "we" mean people ringing full-circle, rather than more
> > specifically method ringers 
> 
> Yes, which is why I added GDR and DA figures together.  Lots of ODG &
> other members don't ring methods anyway.

I'm sure, and of course what stage someone has to reach before they are thought suitable to become 
members may well vary from place to place. 

> 
> > towers that are less ambitious, in terms of only wanting to ring
> > rounds and call changes tend to manage to train and retain (at least
> > part time) more people (to their required standards) than method
> > towers.
> 
> I wonder whether that's because the skip the 'difficult stuff' or because
> their primary focus and expectations are about on performance, 

What I meant was that in Devon typically,  the lower level ringing has a much lower ceiling in 
terms of what they *want* to do and hence learn to do, beyond which the band does not go.  They 
aren't skipping difficult stuff, they just have no interest in doing it, and in the case of older 
long established ringers, sometimes posiively hostile to anything smelling of "methods".  The 
quality of actual performance may or may not be good - that's very variable between towers.  Apart 
from the relatively few bands into competitions, they are doing their ringing for village community 
reasons, not ringing performance reasons.  The decline of Sunday services doesn't help.

> 
> > Guilds that emphasised methods would be expected, other things being
> > qual, to have fewer ringers per tower
> 
> I've done a lot of analysis of numbers of ringers per tower, in ODG and
> many other societies at different times over the last century, using
> member lists in annual reports as source data, but that didn't include
> Devon (because I didn't have ready access).  It would be interesting to
> add.

All the (extant) GDR reports, starting 1877, are digitised. Early ones (to 1959) are here:

https://devonringers.org.uk/guild/library/annual-reports

 If you want to go through later ones, let me know. I suggest you start with a subsample :-)


Richard Johnston