Barrow Bells - Peal Records

What is a Peal?

Peals are rung by experienced ringers and take a great deal of skill and concentration over a long time - typically around 3 hours at St James. Peals are often rung to celebrate some event (such as a jubilee, wedding, anniversary). They can also be rung for the challenge and enjoyment of the bell-ringers. Because of their length, the ringing can gradually achieve degrees of accuracy not easily achieved in short pieces on a practice night or service ringing. This allows the ringers to get into a rhythm, and enjoy the 'music' of the bells with the bells evenly spaced, and without any bell clipping each other (ringing too close together).

Peals have some very special features, that need some introduction to understand. If you rang 2 bells, there are two sequences (otherwise known as 'changes') that can be rung 1-2, and 2-1. On 3 bells there are six: 1-2-3, 1-3-2, 2-1-3, 2-3-1, 3-1-2, and 3-2-1. On 4 bells there are 24, and so on.

Peals are rung with no repetition of any single change (sequence), until every other change has been rung or reach a minimum of 5000 changes. On 7 bells or fewer, at least 5040 changes total are required for a peal, and 8 bells or more a minimum of 5000 changes must be rung.

Peals on fewer than 7 bells, will need to repeat several extents (complete sets of changes), so 6 bells would ring 7 x Extents of 720 changes = 5040 changes.

Peal Records from the Belfry and Other Records, and PealBase.

Click on any of these thumbnail images to enlarge:

Peal Summaries are available in the Felsted project.
This page has gathered together details of many of these peals from newspapers, magazines, belfry records and LACR annual reports.
There is a summary table, followed by the full details of each peal (summary has on-page links to the peal details).

The Publication reference column abbreviations are C.B. for Church Bells magazine, and RW for Ringing World.

The Belfry Record Acroynm - Vol 1 = original log file; OCF = Orange Clip Folder (essentially vol 2); Vol 3 = log file from restoration in 2014

In summary, the peals rung at this tower are:

First Peal Details

The first peal rung on the bells is recorded in the belfry records (p12) and in The Barrow Herald Saturday July 28th, 1877

Belfry Records:
"The bells were ready for Ringing on the 25th July 1877(St James' Day) and a special dedication service was held. A party of change Ringers from Earlsheaton near Dewsbury was engaged and in the course of the day rang a peal of Kent Treble consisting of 5120 changes in 3 hrs 15 min. Charles Fox acting as conductor."

Barrow Herald (Saturday, 28 July 1877 edition):
"It was fitting that the bells should have rung their first merry peal on the feast of St James. The committee secured the services of a society of ringers from Dewsbury - a neighbourhood where the art of bell ringing is thoroughly appreciated and understood. The treble was rung by Mr. William Senior, 77 years of age, No. 2 bell by Mr. Frank Bailey, No. 3 by Mr. Seth Senior, No. 4 by Mr. Harry Robinson, No. 5 by Mr. John Kaye, No. 6 by Mr. Chas. Senior, No. 7 by Mr John Garforth and the tenor by Mr. Chas. A. Fox, who also acted as conductor."
"Shortly after luncheon, the bell ringers again raised the bells in peal, and commenced ringing 5120 changes, known as the "Kent Treble Bob Major". The work there is in performing these changes may be estimated from the fact that there were about 27 changes performed every minute, with eight strikes in each change. This continued for 3 hours and 17 minutes."

The peal records from 1st Jan 1953 have been captured in PealBase - a great ringing resource (external to this site) that has captured information of over 250,000 peals rung since 1953.
Other resources include Felsted and BellBoard A PDF document is available to view containing the 20 peals rung at St James in this period : Peal Records 1953 to 2011
Note: no peals were rung between 1999 and 2013 when the bells were out of action.