Bells to ring in honour of HM Queen Elizabeth II
On Monday, 19th September the bells of St Mary Redcliffe will ring in honour of HM Queen Elizabeth II on the day of her funeral in London.
There will be ringing from 10am with tolling of our tenor bell for fifteen minutes leading up to the start of the 11am service at Westminster Abbey.
Following the funeral and two-minutes silence, the St Mary Redcliffe Guild of Ringers will begin a peal attempt starting at midday and continuing until around 4pm.
The bells will be fully muffled with the tenor open at backstroke. This is a British tradition that has lasted for centuries, and ringing for the death of a monarch is one of the very few occasions when this type of ringing can be heard.
A muffle is a leather pad which is strapped to the clapper of each bell. When the clapper strikes the bell it makes a softer, somber sound rather than the usual loud sound a bell makes. The tenor bell, however, which is the largest bell and has the lowest note, only has a muffle on one side of the clapper. This means it alternates from sounding softly to sounding at full volume while being rung, and this provides a tolling effect.
A peal is the bell ringers’ equivalent of a marathon, requiring concentration and stamina. It is a ‘gold standard’ ringing performance during which the bells are rung continuously in over 5,000 unique sequences. Such ringing starts and ends with rounds, having meanwhile visited only a subset of the possible permutations.
Each bell requires one person, so for this peal attempt for The Queen there will be ten bells being rung by ten ringers. They will be ringing 'Grandsire Caters'.
For further information about bellringing at St Mary Redcliffe click here.
