[Bell Historians] Number of ringers

[John Harrison]

In article <69F62D64.6724.AC55D5A7 at johnstonrh.rhj.org.uk>,
   Richard Johnston via Bell-historians
<bell-historians at lists.ringingworld.co.uk> wrote:

> 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?

I have the figures from ODG annual reports but I don't have the church
figures for Oxford Diocese in 1930.  Coleridge quoted total national
figures and said what order the leading dioceses were in but didn't give
figures for them.

> ... as I don't know how well ODG is doing now.

It's 'interesting'.  The paper I'm working starts by looking at ODG over
its lifetime and then tries to generalise some wider insights.  But each
twist opens up new questions I want to try and answer.

> ... They aren't skipping difficult stuff, they just have no interest in
> doing it,

Maybe skip wasn't the best word.  I meant they didn't include it in their
objectives so didn't get bogged down in its 'difficulty'.  I personally
think the difficulty is over played.  If ringers learn to control their
bells properly the mental aspect, of simple methods anyway, isn't as hard
for most people as is made out.

> The quality of actual performance may or may not be good - that's very
> variable between towers.

Once on a business trip I saw it was the local practice so went along,
hoping that my ringing would be good enough not to let down the method
ringing fraternity.  I needn't have worried.  It was as bad as call
changes often are in method land.  At the time I put that down to it being
Cornwall rather than Devon.

> All the (extant) GDR reports, starting 1877, are digitised. Early ones
> (to 1959) are here:
> https://devonringers.org.uk/guild/library/annual-reports

Thanks.  I didn't find that when I hunted round the site before.

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

Don't worry.  I know how long it takes!  For ODG I used overall data for
as many years as I could get but only did the ODG tower by tower analysis
for 1934, 1950, 1988 & 2024.

Just had a quick glance at 1934.  I wonder what the square brown object
obscuring chunks of text on p 16 & p 17 is.  Looks accidental rather than
early redaction.

-- 
John Harrison
Website http://jaharrison.me.uk
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The future isn't what it was. ™ Don McDonald