south weald bell ringing
St Peters Church South Weald
Mark's first quarter peal
Peals and Quarter Peals

For some people, the ultimate goal of ringing is to ring a tower's bells in every possible order without repeating. On six bells this is 720 permutations or pulls of the rope (changes) and would take around half an hour. St. Peter's has 8 bells and so 40,320 combinations could be rung without repetition. This would take a staggering 25 hours! This is obviously not practical and so a Peal is defined as an extended performance with no repetitions.  It must last 5000 changes on 8 bells or 5040 changes on seven or fewer and takes 3 hours.  A performance of 1250 changes on 8 bells or 1260 on 7 or fewer is defined as a quarter peal and lasts about 45 minutes.

 

A listing of all the recorded peals rung at St. Peters can be found on the Felstead database. Details of recent peals are on on our website, here. Although some members of the St. Peter's band have a great peal record, peals are not often rung by our band together. However, we do try to ring quarter peals regularly, usually before Evensong once a month. They are often rung in celebration of an event, for example a birth, Christening or Marriage, to consolidate a method being learnt in practice, or just for fun.

 

Here are the latest two quarter peals rung at St Peter's by the St. Peter's band and friends.

For details of quarters by year please see the links below.

 

Sunday 20th February 2011

Rutland Surprise Major

1250 changes in minutes

Treble - Roger Butt

2 - Rowena L Marshall

3 - Helen Harpole

4 - John Cousins

5 - John Harpole

6 - Darren Osborne

7 - Paul Trueman

8 - Steven Nash (c)

For Evensong.
First in method: 4 and 6.

 

Sunday 30th January 2011

Plain Bob Doubles

1260 changes in minutes

Treble - Sheila B Shilton-Brown

2 - Beth E Johnson

3 - Vic J C Dale

4 - Maria T Jorysz

5 - Paul R Trueman (c)

6 - Paul James

For Confirmation Service
and the first visit to this church of our new Bishop.