Bell Ringers

We greatly appreciate the assistance of visiting ringers helping us ring for the Sunday Eucharist Service. Your presence is crucial to us due to our small numbers!

Since Chester Cathedral is one of only two places in Cheshire where ringers can practice 12-bell ringing (the other place is located in Macclesfield), we host an open 10/12 bell practice on the first Monday of the month unless it is a bank holiday. Any ringers who can ring anything between rounds and surprise maximus are welcome!

Full peal attempts are usually rung throughout the year, most commonly on Saturdays

For the time being, the fourth Sunday afternoon ringing has been left open for visiting bands to arrange ringing sessions at the cathedral or extra ringing arranged by the Chester Cathedral Guild.

Please note that ALL Sunday Evensong ringing is by invitation only, and the Addleshaw Tower will be closed to the public. Any visiting ringers wanting to attend the Advanced 10/12 bell practice must contact the Ringing Master in advance beforehand.

Ringers wishing to attend the advanced 10/12 bell practice must be able to ring at least Cambridge Surprise Royal and/or Stedman Cinques.

History of the bells at Chester Cathedral

From the early seventeenth Century until the 1930s, the cathedral housed a heavy ring of 8 bells, with a tenor weight of around 30 cwt (1.5 tons), hung high in the central tower. The top half of the louvred section of the tower was the belfry, and the bottom half was the ringing room, a similar set-up to what can be seen presently at Hereford Cathedral. In the 1930s, the heavy ring of 8 bells was augmented to a ring of 10 and would remain in regular use only until the early 1960s.

From their installation until their eventual removal in February of 1968, the ring of 10 presented a lot of issues for the cathedral. The fact that they were hung so high in the tower with no sound control over the louvres meant that they would have been incredibly deafening for the listeners in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral. Also, the English style of bellringing requires the bells to be able to be swung in a 360° rotation. This intense motion of the bells exerted a significant amount of force on the mostly mediaeval structure of the cathedral, and it has been reported that while these bells were ringing, the force caused the entire structure to oscillate with the swinging of the bells. This problem was exacerbated in the late nineteenth Century when bell ringers would start regularly attempting 3.5-hour full peals and 45-minute quarter peals on the bells, which would hasten the demise of these bells, with the last ever quarter peal performed on these bells being rung on Sunday 12 March 1961. Ringing in the final quarter peal was Helen S Shone, who would later be known as Helen S Mitchell. She is a recently departed member of the Chester Cathedral Guild of Bell Ringers and would constantly tell stories about ringing these bells, she was an enthusiastic supporter of ringing in Chester right up until her passing in November 2023. The ringing community in Chester would have never been the same without her! She was one of the few still-living ringers who had experience ringing the old bells at the Cathedral.

Towards the end of 1963, it was found that the bells in the central tower were in need of an overhaul, and bell ringing was subsequently suspended at the Cathedral. In 1965, George Pace, who was the architect for York Minster, was commissioned to prepare a report for the restoration, to which he recommended that due to the poor tonal quality of the bells, that they would be recast and rehung in a brand new bell frame. The rehanging and installation of these new bells presented lots of challenges for George; access to the tower is difficult, the installation was going to be expensive, and the bell frame could not be installed properly without obscuring upper arches and gallery of the chancel crossing, which are important structural features of the cathedral. This revelation meant that it wouldn’t be possible to reinstall the bells in the central tower, therefore, George Pace recommended that a separate campanile should be built, ideally in the southeast corner of the churchyard.

This proposal from George Pace was accepted by the Dean and Chapter in 1968, and was commissioned to create and propose a design for the tower, which was revealed at the 1969 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and proposed that the tower would be named after the current Revd G.W.O. Addleshaw. In February 1969, nine of the bells were removed from the central tower, leaving the former 8^th and service bell, and would be recast by John Taylor & Company of Loughborough in 1973 into the present fine ring of 12 bells, plus a flat 6^th bell. The new tenor bell weighs just under 25cwt (or 1257kg) and is tuned to the key of D Major. The tower’s first stones were laid on 16June 1973 by Lord Leverhulme, Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire, and the tower was complete by late 1974 when the bells were installed, with the first trial ring occurring on 23 October 1974. The bells rang for a wedding for the first time on 26^th February 1975, of which the bride was a member of the Grosvenor Family before being officially opened on 25 June 1975 by the Duke of Gloucester, which involved ringers from thirteen different towers near the Chester area, ringing each bell three times, and the ceremony finished with a peal attempt of a 12-bell method called Kent Treble Bob Maximus.

More recently, a brand new extra treble bell (bell 0) was cast and installed again by Taylor’s Bell Foundry in 2021 with the assistance of a couple of local ringers. This original extra treble, however, was quickly found to have very poor tonal quality compared to the 13 other bells and was not up to the world-class standards that Taylor’s is known for producing high-quality bells; it should have never left the foundry! This bell was subsequently replaced by a new bell which was installed in January 2024, having been cast in November 2023, which is now up to satisfactory standards, and is now ringing regularly with the other 13 bells!

Since 1975, the bells have been regularly rung twice every Sunday and Monday evenings, as well as for many special occasions, and with recent improvements to the acoustics and sound quality inside the tower, the Chester Cathedral Guild of Bell Ringers are proud to be regularly ringing on one of the finest peals of bells in the North West of England, and are rated highly by lots of ringers for the suitability of the ring for teaching learners, who will help maintain this uniquely English tradition for the foreseeable future.