Ringing to summon the faithful to Sunday morning communion, or tolling sombrely to warn of impending peril in times of national emergency, church bells have been part of the music of our lives. They chime on your wedding day, ring out on Christmas morning, and, in between, fastidiously note the passing hour – and perhaps its quarters too – so that, caught scurrying without a watch from one duty to the next, you will scarcely need to look around for the time, but merely count it in your head.

 

The very earliest use of bells in Christian churches was once ascribed to St Paulinus, bishop of Nola in southern Italy in around AD 400. This is undoubtedly a myth, but is interesting because it explains the derivation of one of the oldest Latin terms for a bell, campana – Nola being in the Campania region of Italy.

 

Even at this early stage, they probably already served the dual function of summoning the devout to Mass and giving notice of dangers such as the approach of hostile forces. So much a part of church ritual had they become over the next two centuries that, in 604, the newly enthroned Pope Sabinian gave official approval for their use. A service for the consecration of bells – still in use in some form today throughout the Christian communion – was inaugurated later.

 

Black Sheep bell inside the belfry at Masham church
© Andrew Linscott / Alamy

The bell takes shape

Bells were not actually bell-shaped at this stage. They were generally made of square sheets of iron or bronze, bent and roughly riveted together, so that their tolling would have sounded flat, dissonant and harsh. Many were straight-sided, some narrowed towards the base, and it was quite common for small holes to be cut in them.

 

These were small bells sited within the church building. The great monsters we associate with church towers, rung by groups

of muscular rope-pullers, didn’t come into being until about the eighth century. By this time, church towers were being constructed purely for the purpose of housing bells of ever greater size.

Bells tuned to particular notes of the scale were only developed in the mid-17th century in Holland, when the calibrated tuning fork was perfected. With this development, they became musical instruments. That said, the development of tuned bells in England at the same time seems almost certain to have been achieved without any technology other than the eardrums of the bell-founders.

 

A church tower could now be mounted with a whole set of tuned bells, so that “peals” of bells could be rung out. This, more than anything, is the distinctive English sound. When rung in overlapping sequences by a team of ringers, the bells carry far and wide, resonating across valleys to arouse sleeping sinners to attend.

Bellringers at a church in Youlgrave, Derbyshire
© Homer Sykes / Alamy

Practical functions

In wartime, the tolling of church bells warned a community of imminent attack or invasion. There was in this practice a reverberation of an older tradition, in which the ringing was thought not just to announce danger, but to ward it off too.

Silence is the Devil’s medium, which is why the service of exorcism involves a bell alongside the Bible and candle. It was also customary to ring church bells during violent storms in order to abate Nature’s fury, a ploy that could reliably be expected to work every time in due course.

 

The tradition of the “passing bell” was of long duration in England. A slow tolling on a single bell announced that a member of either a monastic or the general community was at death’s door, and that prayers for his soul might profitably be offered. The bell would be tolled again after his death, perhaps to indicate the number of years he had lived. This practice survived the Reformation, and continued in the form of the tradition of ringing a solemn single bell to accompany the procession of a funeral cortège from the home of the deceased to the church entrance.

Record-breakers

The oldest dated bell in England is believed to be the one at Lisset, near Bridlington, East Yorkshire, which bears the date 1254, although the undated one at St Botolph’s in Hardham, West Sussex, is probably 11th century, like the church itself. It is still in use.

The largest is the 17-ton Great Paul, which hangs in the south-west tower of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and was cast in 1881.

• Those interested in learning the craft of campanology should contact the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, founded in 1891 to promote and encourage bell-ringing skills. Find out more about the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers here