The Ringing Isle: An Introduction to Bells in Britain
Our Free Lectures
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1h 1m
An introductory canter across the centuries, exploring aspects of church bells and bellringing? How did Britain come to have ‘bells so many and so tuneable’? What purposes did they serve? What powers were they believed to have? And how are they faring today?
Gareth Davies is a postgraduate researcher in history at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He is currently completing a thesis on the ‘business of bellringing’ - exploring the relative importance of profit and pleasure to ringers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has been a bellringer himself for over forty years, and his nearest church with bells is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. He currently serves as a member of the History and Archives group on the Central Council of Church Bellringers.
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