Ringing the Bullring

The thing about bell ringing is that it is often a hidden activity taking place in a hidden space, admittedly within a largely public building, and an activity that perhaps isn't necessarily well understood.

I think the kind of magic of getting to go to a part of the church that most people aren't allowed to go in is just super.

It's one of the main things I loved, certainly, at the beginning.

And then when you come to big famous towers like St Martin the Bullring, it's just special.

There is history and pride plastered all over the walls from hundreds of years of tradition in this room.

It's a fairly big room.

It's probably about 20 feet square, but 16 ropes, well-spaced, falling all around the walls.

Wherever you look, there's a bell rope in front of you.

For me, it's the sense of history, but it's also...

You get a little bit of a buzz when you walk into the room because you know that this is the kind of place where ringing is really good and you feel like you have to raise your game for it.

There's an air of respect you have to give, isn't there? Absolutely.

It looks like it might be.

St Martin's is the main parish church in the centre of Birmingham and for very, very many years has had a very strong culture of bell ringing or what we might call change ringing.

And I think because we have been fortunate here to have been led by a long sequence of very, very capable ringing masters...

some of them very exacting.

The quality of ringing here has always been high and certainly it's one of the most prolific towers for peel ringing.

We've got what we call peel boards.

Peels are things that are rung which take three and a half hours and they're special pieces of ringing.

We do quite a lot of peel ringing in Birmingham but very special ones get recorded on the walls with everyone's name, the date, what was rung and there's always a reason for it.

And there have been bells in this tower from, I think, the first documented bells were in the 16th century.

The very first peal at St Martin's here was rung in 1758.

That's the first documented peal.

And indeed, there is a peal board on the wall of the ringing chamber that we can see that details that performance, which was rung in three hours and 22 minutes ago.

a method or a tune called Grant's Cicadas.

And on the board it lists that there were two men who rang the tenor bell, the heaviest bell.

The thing about bell ringing is that it is often a hidden activity taking place in a hidden space, admittedly within a largely public building, and an activity that perhaps isn't necessarily well understood.

I think the kind of magic of getting to go to a part of the church that most people aren't allowed to go in is just super.

It's one of the main things I loved, certainly, at the beginning.

And then when you come to big famous towers like St Martin the Bullring, it's just special.

There is history and pride plastered all over the walls from hundreds of years of tradition in this room.

It's a fairly big room.

It's probably about 20 feet square, but 16 ropes, well-spaced, falling all around the walls.

Wherever you look, there's a bell rope in front of you.

For me, it's the sense of history, but it's also...

You get a little bit of a buzz when you walk into the room because you know that this is the kind of place where ringing is really good and you feel like you have to raise your game for it.

There's an air of respect you have to give, isn't there? Absolutely.

It looks like it might be.

St Martin's is the main parish church in the centre of Birmingham and for very, very many years has had a very strong culture of bell ringing or what we might call change ringing.

And I think because we have been fortunate here to have been led by a long sequence of very, very capable ringing masters...

some of them very exacting.

The quality of ringing here has always been high and certainly it's one of the most prolific towers for peel ringing.

We've got what we call peel boards.

Peels are things that are rung which take three and a half hours and they're special pieces of ringing.

We do quite a lot of peel ringing in Birmingham but very special ones get recorded on the walls with everyone's name, the date, what was rung and there's always a reason for it.

And there have been bells in this tower from, I think, the first documented bells were in the 16th century.

The very first peal at St Martin's here was rung in 1758.

That's the first documented peal.

And indeed, there is a peal board on the wall of the ringing chamber that we can see that details that performance, which was rung in three hours and 22 minutes ago.

a method or a tune called Grant's Cicadas.

And on the board it lists that there were two men who rang the tenor bell, the heaviest bell.