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≡Dove’s Guide for Church Bell Ringers
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Dove’s Guide for Church Bell Ringers

A guide to towers throughout the world with bells used for change ringing and other bells of interest.

First published in book form by Ronald H Dove in 1950, this is the online guide managed by the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, now extended to details of bells, frames, founders and projects. Find out more about Dove’s Guide…

The printed Dove’s Guide for Church Bell Ringers is on sale.

Details incorrect or incomplete?

Grateful thanks are given to those who contribute additions or revisions. This includes bellringers, researchers and the bellfounding and bellhanging industry. Your support is vital to maintain the quality of this resource.

Updates can be submitted from the individual tower pages, or by email to the Dove Team. Please see our help pages for further information.

Site news

15 May 2026: Peal Boards

In support of the project to collect images and details of peal boards across the country, the History & Archive group of the Central Council, Dove and BellBoard have been working together to introduce a new way to collect and access these images. BellBoard already has the facility to allow users to add peal board images to performances. Where this has been done you can now view the peal boards and associated performances by clicking links from individual tower pages in Dove.

If you want your peal boards to appear, please create a BellBoard entry for the performance and attach the photograph. If the relevant performance is already there, either ask the person who originally uploaded the entry to attach your photograph, or use the Add Photo feature in BellBoard making it clear which performance this relates to. Data are shared between the two systems overnight so updates in one won’t instantly appear in the other.

In due course we expect to include additional data on each board and a quality control mechanism to improve and enrich the database. It is envisaged that the existing H&A Peal Board Database will be incorporated to create this ongoing crowd supported feature, allowing that team to curate the collection. This is another example of how we have been connecting all of our sources and co-operating across ringing. Our thanks go to the Ringing World and in particular the BellBoard Team for helping make this happen.

29 Apr 2026: Updated policy on website URLs

Dove has the ability to link to individual tower web pages from the tower details page to allow a visitor to find out more about the tower. The policy of updating these has been updated to help manage those occasions when considerable numbers of tower URLs are updated by individual associations or bell historian sites.

1. Dove will link to tower web pages on association web pages (except where a website redesign has broken existing URLs per point 3), to individual tower websites, to pages about the bells or ringers on the church website, and to tower pages on the websites of recognised bell historians.

2. When an association or historian’s website is rewritten, we expect the webmaster to take technical measures to ensure that the previous URLs to tower pages continue to work, for example by redirecting to the appropriate new page. This is standard good practice in web site management.

3. If an association or historian’s website does not make old URLs continue to work in a timely fashion we will remove our links to tower pages on the association website entirely instead of updating them. We endeavour to contact that site webmaster before doing this. If they can commit to getting the old URLs working again, we will leave the broken links in place while this work progresses; otherwise they will be removed promptly. Once removed, we will not ordinarily add links to that association or historian’s website again.

4. As an exception to point 3, if an association or bell historian moves from a free subdomain (e.g. borsetshire.provider.com) to their own domain (e.g. borsetshire-ringing.uk) we will update the URLs to accommodate this. There is no similar exception for other changes of domain. This is a significant amount of work and may take us several months to process. Please bear with us.

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Dove Stewards
  • Dickon Love (Team Lead)
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Recent updates to rings

17 May

Hovingham, All Saints, North Yorkshire
1-6: weight, diameter, nominal, turning amended; 1-5: canon amended
Melsonby, S James Gt, North Yorkshire
Whites of Appleton project added

16 May

Melsonby, S James Gt, North Yorkshire
Taylors Project added
St Helens, S Thomas, Eccleston, Merseyside
1-8: nominal amended; 3-5,8: diameter amended; 3,4: weight amended

15 May

Chetwynd, S Michael & All Angels, Shropshire
Transfer history noted.
Elvetham, S Mary, Hampshire
Fr1: layout amended. Fr2 added.
Gressenhall, Assumption of BVM, Norfolk
Fr1: material added
Hereford, All Saints, Herefordshire
5: approx weight added; 1-8: nominal added; 8: diameter amended; 1-7: diameter added.
Kaiapoi, South Island, New Zealand
New lightweight ring location and transfer of bells from Oamaru
Kinver, S Peter, Staffordshire
PN amended
Linslade, S Barnabas, Bedfordshire
Transfer and augmentation events updated.
Melton, S Andrew, Suffolk
Transfer history noted.
Norton Disney, S Peter, Lincolnshire
Toilet added
Roos, All Saints, East Riding of Yorkshire
2 independent routes to the ringing room noted
Sutton Veny, S John Ev, Wiltshire
Transfer history noted.
Todmorden, Unitarian, West Yorkshire
Ownership updated

14 May

Biddenham, S James, Bedfordshire
Toilet added
Hendon, S Mary, Greater London
5: founder amended
Kingskerswell, S Mary, Devon
Fr1: truss, layout added
Legbourne, All Saints, Lincolnshire
PN added; ART teaching centre flag added
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Content: Dove Team – Programming: Richard Smith & Sid Baldwin.
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