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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 send a copy of your photograph to the H&A Peal Boards Team at pealboards@cccbr.org.uk. 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

15 May

Gressenhall, Assumption of BVM, Norfolk
Fr1: material added
Kinver, S Peter, Staffordshire
PN amended

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
Upton Bishop, S John Bapt, Herefordshire
Toilet added

13 May

Borden, S Peter & S Paul, Kent
Fr1: date, maker amended. Amendments to creation and 1885 overhaul dates.
Boughton under Blean, S Peter & S Paul, Kent
Fr1: year, maker amended. 1886 rehang added (Warners did not provide a new frame in 1886)
Compton, S Nicholas, Surrey
1-6: turning added; 5,6: canon added; frame added; tuned year removed
Downe, S Mary Magd, Greater London
1-6: nominal added; Fr1: truss, layout added
Harlow Common, S Mary Magd, Essex
1960s overhaul description amended
Hartshorne, S Peter, Derbyshire
Ringing temporarily suspended
Hilton, S Mary Magd, Cambridgeshire
3-6: turning added

08 May

Manchester, Cath and Collegiate Ch of S Mary, S Denys, & S George, Greater Manchester
Project description amended
Upton Grey, S Mary, Hampshire
Fr1: truss, layout added; Fr9: truss added
Wentworth, Holy Trinity, South Yorkshire
Project completed
Winterslow, All Saints, Wiltshire
New project added
Winterton, All Saints, Norfolk
1-6: nominal added

07 May

Brigstock, S Andrew, Northamptonshire
4-8: nominal added; 4-7: diameter amended; Fr1: maker amended
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Content: Dove Team – Programming: Richard Smith & Sid Baldwin.
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