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.

3 Apr: Frames information in the Dove Bell Register

We have now completed the major phase of transferring the bellframe information from the former Dove database into the new database such that we can now maintain this information. It now possible to search on frame components and layouts, as well as makers and materials from the new frames search page.

We are embarking on a programme of cleansing the frames data as we have discovered some inconsistencies and we have a backlog of a year’s worth of amendments that need to be processed. We thank contributors for your patience with these updates. We also have data on frames listed for preservation by the Church Buildings Council that do not contain rings of bells which will be incorporated at some point in the future.

24 Mar: The Rev’d Dr John Baldwin

It is with much sadness that we announce the death of the Rev’d Dr John Baldwin on the evening of 23rd March 2022. John succeeded Ron Dove in taking on the collection and maintenance of information on rings of bells, and was the first to digitise it just after the 1982 edition was published. This led to the first website appearing in 1998 and the extension of the scope to include details on individual bells and frames. John continued to lead the team as Dove Master until his retirement in 2017, although he continued to take a valuable active role until the database was transferred to its present form in 2020. Our thoughts are with his widow, Beryl, and children, Judith and Sid at this distressing time.

25 Oct: The former iOS Dove App

In 2017 we announced that the iOS Dove App was no longer available. Since then, users who already had the app installed were able to use it, but with no updates possible, ir has increasingly fallen out of sync with later operating systems. The app was developed independently and the Dove Team does not have the code, nor is the original developer available.

In the meantime, we have developed mobile friendly versions of the website, and in due course we may extend that to developing a new app. We also intend to launch the ability for individuals to record their own tower grabs via the website in due course.

We are making this statement now as recent changes to iOS have resulted in an increase in the number of people enquiring about the app.