---
title: 'I Tried to Learn Bell-Ringing in One Hour'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=WGia1R3xacM'
video_id: 'WGia1R3xacM'
date: 2026-07-14
duration_sec: 1394
---

# I Tried to Learn Bell-Ringing in One Hour

> Source: [I Tried to Learn Bell-Ringing in One Hour](https://youtube.com/watch?v=WGia1R3xacM)

## Summary

This video explores the art and science of English change ringing, from the mechanics of swinging massive bells to the mathematical patterns that create unique sequences. The host visits Worcester Cathedral, learns the basics from expert ringers, and attempts to ring a bell himself, all while uncovering the history and culture behind this centuries-old tradition.

### Key Points

- **Bell-ringing is complex and dangerous** [00:00] — Many people suggested bell-ringing, but it's much more complicated than just playing a tune and dangerous if done wrong.
- **Mathematical patterns instead of songs** [00:40] — Instead of one person playing a song, bell-ringers play mathematical patterns, which is where the phrase 'ringing the changes' comes from.
- **Tower movement from ringing** [01:09] — The bells swing the whole cathedral tower, moving a few inches in all directions, feeling like a slight earthquake.
- **Bells cast by Taylor's Foundry** [01:55] — The bells at Worcester Cathedral were cast in 1928 by Taylor's Foundry in Loughborough, and are one of the finest sounding sets in the world.
- **Loudness of the tenor bell** [03:07] — The sound of the big tenor bell is one of the loudest things the host has ever heard, hitting you particularly hard.
- **Unique harmonic minor ring of ten** [03:35] — Worcester Cathedral is the only tower in the world that can produce a harmonic minor ring of ten, used for remembrance and mournful occasions.
- **Pop culture inaccuracies** [04:56] — Scenes in films like 'Carry On Constable' and 'Allo 'Allo!' show people being pulled up by bell ropes, but this is inaccurate because you'd let go or the ropes aren't live.
- **Bell-ringing is like pushing a swing** [06:35] — Ringing a bell is not like pulling a lever; it's like pushing a kid on a swing, adding energy at the right time to keep it going.
- **Danger of the stay** [07:03] — When a bell is resting on the stay, it's dangerous because if the stay breaks, the bell will swing and the rope will come down uncontrollably.
- **Rules of change ringing** [08:57] — Only bells next to each other in the sequence can swap positions, and the ringing master calls out numbers to direct changes.
- **Bell-ringing helps with Parkinson's** [10:38] — Chris, a ringer with Parkinson's, uses bell-ringing as physical exercise to slow the rate of deterioration and dementia.
- **Simulator for practice** [11:48] — Worcester Cathedral has a simulator with weighted dumb bells that allows practice without disturbing services.
- **Two strokes: handstroke and backstroke** [14:36] — Ringing involves two strokes: pulling the sally (handstroke) and pulling the tail (backstroke), requiring precise timing.
- **Learning to catch the sally** [15:58] — The host learns to catch the sally at the right moment to avoid being pulled up, comparing it to juggling.
- **Attempt to ring with the team** [19:17] — After an hour of training, the host attempts to ring with the full team, but struggles with timing and fumbles under pressure.

### Conclusion

Bell-ringing is a challenging but rewarding skill that combines physical coordination, mathematical thinking, and teamwork. The host's brief success shows that with practice, anyone can contribute to this ancient tradition.

## Transcript

so many people suggested bell-ringing. It is much more complicated than just playing a tune, and also, dangerous if you do it wrong.
there will be a church with a bell tower not too far away. You’ll hear church bells on Sundays in almost every town and village. At Worcester Cathedral, early in the morning before the Sunday service,
and the first thing we did was go up to the top of the tower. That’s beautiful! I think I can see the rainstorm coming in. (bells ringing)  Oh! Never mind.
There is an unmistakable sound because instead of one person playing a particular song, they’re playing mathematical patterns.
which is where we get the phrase, “ringing the changes”. There are so many words and phrases in English that come from bell-ringing. you can feel the tower moving a few inches in all directions.
that they swing the whole cathedral tower.  -Yeah. Yeah, so our tower moves a bit more than most towers. It felt like being in a very slight earthquake every time the biggest bell,
Which brings up the obvious question: how big are these bells? We put on ear defenders and went down a level into the belfry. (bells ringing)
-Yeah, it doesn’t always happen!  -(laughs) But they managed it just right there. That weighs two and a half tonnes.
-Taylor’s Foundry in Loughborough.  -I was there a couple weeks ago. Those bells were made by the same foundry I visited at the start of the road trip! because the largest one is two and a half tonnes.
You’ll notice they’ve all been left pointing upwards... So, they were all cast in 1928, And they’re one of the finest sounding sets in the world.
Wow! Yeah. I mean, that was a pretty good view. We climbed up to an overlook,
and Darren texted down to ask the bell-ringers for another quick ring: It was Sunday morning, so this wasn’t going to be unexpected When they get ready to go, you might see the tenor start rocking
You have to bounce it before it will go.  -Right. the smallest one, the treble, to ring. (bells ringing)
That was one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard. The sound hits you, particularly every time the big tenor bell goes. Change ringing starts and ends with a scale, highest-to-lowest,
and in between, plays about with that pattern. (bells reverberating) How on earth?!
because we have some semitones. You can’t ring them all at the same time, it doesn’t give you a true scale. But we can swap particular bells for a sharp or a flat version of it,
And actually we’re the only tower in the world that can produce a harmonic minor ring of ten. It sounds impressive and it sounds fantastic.
so, we ring them for remembrance and other mournful occasions. -That’s for sound.  -This pipe. It’s actually an experiment at the moment, but that particular bell
And that’s a way of trying to get more sound downstairs. but it’s a bit of a trial and error sort of experiment.
Each of those bells is connected by a long rope down to the ringing chamber, And I was there just in time for the next set of “changes”.
the basics of bell-ringing were just kind of…general knowledge. The idea of bells and bell ropes, that didn’t need any explanation,
1960s slapstick police comedy, Carry On Constable the sally, the fluffy bit of the bell rope, No!   (bell chiming)
set in France in the Second World War, had a scene where the comedy villains, Gestapo officers disguised as monks… …they also end up dangling from the bell ropes.
what those ropes were or even what bell-ringing was. Both of those scenes are wildly inaccurate, by the way, for two reasons: first, as soon as the bell rope started to pull you up, you’d let go,
If for some reason you clung on, you might be pulled up by the rising rope, Unless, of course, there was a ceiling, in which case you’d
The rope would carry on, giving you friction burns, but you’d let go, But that’s not funny, and back when most people knew being hauled up into the tower was a silly what-if punchline.
But the second reason most of the time, those bell ropes are not live, You wouldn’t be able to just stumble across
And to explain that, I have this prop. The rope is attached to this wheel, which is attached to the bell,
And remember, that bell weighs tonnes. Instead, it’s like pushing a kid on a swing. and then pull again at the right time,
and “ring the bell up”. it’ll almost be doing a full revolution, on what’s called the ‘stay’.
that’s where all the bells were, on their stays, That’s when it’s dangerous. tonnes of bell will start to swing, and at that point,
it’s going, the bell WILL turn, and the rope WILL come down. the rope starts going back up, and the clapper, will get a ring.
But that bell is not gonna stop. and like a kid on a swing, it WILL come back down again, swing the other way, and so on, and so on, and so on.
it’s adjusting the timing of one part of a complicated system, one bell, to hold the bell just on its tipping point for a moment to slow it down,
or to add enough energy that the bell will reach the stay... and stop, but not hit it too hard, because that stay can be broken Oh, and also, you have to watch what the other people are doing,
What Darren’s about to say will make sense in a moment. (bells ringing) So, they were ringing call changes where one person actually
But when you were upstairs, you were recording a method so, they will just say ‘start’, and everybody knows what they have to do. By this point, it was nearly time for the Sunday service
so, Darren took up position as ringing master, and after they started with the initial high-to-low scale, he said some numbers. to swap bells in the current sequence.
So, ten and eleven just swapped positions. that are currently next to each other in the sequence can swap. If you wanted to move 1 to 4, you’d have to go through 2 and 3 first.
That’s the basic rules of traditional change ringing, which sound simple, but the ringing master’s job is to run through a set of permutations, or to run a particular sequence.
that’s where all the bell-ringers are working from memory. for special events, bell-ringers might run through every possible permutation
That could be maybe five thousand changes taking three or four hours. the ringing master just has to remember the rules and the patterns,
The plaques on the walls in that room, or other major events. so, they kept going until half past the hour,
until Darren brought it back to the scale. 4 to 5!   (bells ringing) (bells ringing)
Alright, thanks very much, everyone. why there’s a big overlap in my audience and bell-ringers. It involves a little maths and paying attention and maybe some notation.
I talked to Chris, who’s been ringing bells at Worcester Cathedral for 33 years. Four years ago, sadly, I got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. So, ringing here helps me to slow down the rate of deterioration.
of being wheelchair-bound in about 15 years’ time. So, by coming here, doing the physical exercise it’s helping slow the deterioration down.
And it is physical work to pull the bells.  -It is. It’s physical work. And when you’ve got a disease, So, I go to the gym three times a week and I come up here.
and memorising them in your head helps to slow the rate of dementia, That is, yeah...it’s a scary thing to be looking at.
It’s a scary one. I’m only 53, so I still want to be ringing here in 10 years’ time. and I had until the end of it to learn the ropes well enough
We couldn’t disturb the church service with bells, of course, but that’s fine... because Worcester Cathedral is one of very few places in the world with a simulator. So, now all I have to do is get good enough in the next hour
We’ll see the simulator in just a moment, but first: I’m really trying to avoid clickbait titles and thumbnails in this series, but I hope I’m on the right side of the line, though,
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so you can find stories that might be outside your bubble entirely. stories still end up being sent around in group chats
they are going to flicker into your attention. is someone trying to enrage me here? What's the context?
it’s still in the same place where my thumb used to go You can join me, and subscribe to Ground News right now with by scanning the QR code or going to ground.news/tom .
Okay. Time for me to learn how to ring a bell. except that instead of the regular bells it has eight weighted dumb bells.
thanks mostly to Americans using it to mean “stupid”, is a silenced bell, a heavy weight spinning round, and yes, that’s probably why the weights people use in the gym are called dumbbells.
Anyway, Darren set one dumb bell into the up position, rested it on the stay, to someone with no upper body strength and poor hand-eye co-ordination.
So, to ring a bell, there are two strokes we call them. which is when you pull the sally, this fluffy bit’s called the sally. which is when you’re pulling on this bit.
Two reasons: first, ’cos I didn’t turn the microphones on for this. very loud and very large ticking clock, later in this road trip series, so, I thought I’d show it to you now.
and getting the muscle memory right. I learnt the backstroke. -Too much?  -A bit too hard, yeah.
-Okay. That’s bad.  -It’s okay. You didn’t bang it. So just go a bit further up an inch or so. Okay, we’ll go again. You don’t have to pull hard. It’s about timing,
above your head, and adding or subtracting energy. is from the laptop just behind, it can’t be heard outside the room. Not putting much energy into the system here.
Which is why you can see ringers in their 80s and 90s ringing bells because they know how to do it super efficiently and not fighting against it.
it was time to learn the other half of the movement: pulling the sally. This part here, once you pull it, it is gonna go no matter what. otherwise you’ll be pulled up with it.  -Oh.
Yeah, it’s currently set like that. -Whatever happens...  -It’s going. The simulator isn’t quite as dangerous as the actual bells,
So, the next thing is to try to catch the sally. You have to wait for the bob, it will rise a bit. This was difficult.
trying to keep the system in balance and in time. holding the sally, putting in no force, and I was catching it… And he had to keep reminding me to keep my eyes forward, not up.
you need to look at the other people You’re also kind of looking at all the other ringers around you. Oh, why does that feel a bit like juggling?
There’s a similarity there. patterns that change over time and can have notation! If you enjoy juggling, you may enjoy bell-ringing,
Next job: put everything together. and then I got a bit startled. -You’re okay.  -I didn’t get...whoa.
I’ll give it back to you.  -That’s okay. -Yeah, go on?  -One is, I felt that snatch up. very briefly, now I don’t think it’s dangerous,
but the rope went like that.  -Right, yeah. -No, that’s fine.  -Okay. One final thing to learn: how to hold the bell on its balance point.
Pause here… You can, yeah, and sometimes you do. You have to wait there for ages. it’s quite happy there.  -But if the bell is coming towards you…
Yeah. Do not try and push it back up.  (laughter) you can’t pause the bell if you haven’t pulled hard enough before. the way to stop is to pull just enough that the bell can rest on the stay
Pulling less means it’ll just start swinging back and forth. -Right!  -...and you can’t wait. But if you pull too hard, you’re gonna hit the stay.
But if you can’t pause, then you need to pull on the next possible opportunity -Whichever stroke it is.  -Alright. The last challenge of the day, then: with about an hour’s training,
If I got this wrong, half of Worcester would hear it. It’s about 50,000 people who live and work within the range of those bells.
If I get one or two rings in and don’t panic, I’ll be happy, but… Eight bell-ringers. One of which is me, with Darren ready to step in, the moment
He’s always going to grab the sally, just for safety, I’m sweating and I’m not entirely sure that’s the climb up the stairs.
We’re gonna be watching John, ’cos we want to ring just after him every time. -Number two.  -John in the blue, okay. Okay.
I will be on the sally with you.  -Okay. So, look, and we’ll pull just after John. You can still face the middle. Pressure on.
whether they want to or not. She’s going. She’s gone. No, I’ve lost that immediately. That’s on you.
- You just stopped for a minute.  -I just stopped. That’s alright, we’ll try again. It was the fun of hearing all the other bells ringing with you.
So, do that, but don’t…just don’t stop. I don’t have an explanation for that other than fumbling under the pressure. Attempt number two.
Going, gone. (bells ringing) You can tell on the wide shot, my timing is completely out.
and the bell is doing the timing for me. -Okay.  -(exhales) Stand.
So, that was fine, but you weren’t going up enough at backstroke. Um, you just weren’t pausing at backstroke. but then just bringing it back down like this.
Pause. So wait...   (one bell rings) It wasn’t quite three strikes and I’m out, but I did not want to outstay my welcome.
Thank you for letting a novice on your bells. ...and make sure you’re up and pause at backstroke... Ready? Look to the treble. Going… gone.
(bells ringing) Just for a moment, just briefly, I had it. -Not quite.  -Stand.
(laughter)  (bells reverberating) -That was an absolute privilege.  -Very impressive. If you’re in England, or a few other
your local church is almost certainly looking for volunteers, Next time, or right now on Nebula: with an angle finder and a slightly unhinged conspiracy theory.