Peal of bells

A "Ring of bells" (or "peal of bells") is a set of bells hung in the full-circle English style, which was invented in the 17th century to give control over the speed of striking of each bell. This feature soon led to the development of change ringing. The vast majority of "rings" are in church towers in the Anglican church in England. A ring can be three to sixteen bells, though six and eight bell towers are the most common. They are tuned to the notes of a diatonic scale.

Each time it sounds, a bell's motion begins in the mouth-upwards position. As the ringer pulls the rope the bell swings down and then back up again on the other side. During the swing, the clapper inside the bell will have struck the soundbow, making the bell sound or "strike". Each pull reverses the direction of the bell's motion; as the bell swings back and forth, the strokes are called "handstroke" and "backstroke" by turns. After the handstroke a portion of the bell-rope is wrapped around almost the entirety of the wheel and the ringer's arms are above his or her head holding the rope's tail end; after the backstroke most of the rope is again free and the ringer is comfortably gripping the rope some way up, usually along a soft woolen thickening called a sally.

The bells are usually arranged in an upper room called a bell loft in such a way that their ropes fall into the room below, called the ringing chamber, in a circle. Clockwise circles are most common, but anticlockwise ones are far from unheard-of. Unlike the norm among most musicians, the bells are numbered downwards, progressing from the treble (the lightest and highest-sounding bell), to the "2", the "3", and so forth down to the heaviest and deepest-sounding bell, the tenor.

The sound made by a bell rung full-circle has two unique subtle features.

Because the clapper rests against the bell immediately after striking it, the peak strike intensity dies away quickly as the clapper dissipates the vibration energy of the bell. This enables rapid successive strikes of multiple bells, such as in change ringing, without excessive overlap and consequent blurring of successive strikes. In addition, the movement of the bell imparts a doppler effect to the sound, as the strike occurs whilst the bell is still moving as it approaches top dead centre.

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