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.

7 Jan 2026: When new rings are created

This is the first of a series of announcements about new features appearing in Dove. We are now able to describe the creation of a new ring.

For an entirely new ring, the creation year is the year the last bell of a ring of bells was cast. If a ring is not installed until a later year or installed by a different hanger from the founder, that is noted as a separate event in the history of the ring. Augmentations will also be dealt with as additions to an existing ring.

This also introduces the principle of what constitutes a new ring (or collection) of bells, particularly after a proportion of them are recast/replaced. If more than half of a ring of bells is recast we consider this to be a brand new ring (consequently leaving a lost ring behind). If exactly half of the ring is recast, we only consider this to be a brand new ring if the tenor is one of those affected.

These details appear in the Projects & overhauls section with the label ring created.

8 Nov 2025: Listed Buildings Status

Back in 2013, a request came from the Church Buildings Council via the CCCBR Committee for Redundant Bells to include listed building grades against each CofE building with a ring of bells. We quickly determined that it would be beneficial for us to also store the individual list entry numbers, and to extend this to other areas of the British Isles. This allows our readers to access further information on the building in a single click.

Tim Jackson has been working on this long-term data collection project using existing data sets where possible and undertaking individual research for the rest. We are pleased to say that this work is now complete, with future updates expected to be triggered by changes and additions rather than filling in the gaps.

30 Dec 2024: Revision to the dating of undated bells

Dove has improved the way it displays the date of a bell and we are asking contributors to be mindful of how to submit estimated dates. Where a bell is undated, Dove now gives the understood founder’s period of activity. Therefore, when submitting an estimated date for a bell, please don’t provide anything outside the given founder’s period of activity, or at least specifically alert us if you believe the period needs correcting.

By way of background, when there is no date on the bell and the date of casting is not known, we have to resort to records to find or estimate the date. Where there are no records and no estimate, judgements need to be made based on information that IS known, such as the founder. Research sometimes tells us the period over which a founder was active. In that instance, Dove now shows the whole period rather than an estimated individual date. On devices that support hover text, you’ll see the description Founder’s period of activity; no better estimate of the date. When the identity of a founder is unknown, or their periods of activity are unknown, we continue to rely on the estimate of expert antiquarians, references to which are being collected. When all else fails, after a particular bell has been examined by suitable persons without any conclusion, it is marked n/d (not dated).

Where a bell just shows a founders period of activity, or a provisional estimate, there remains scope for these data to be the subject of research, which we encourage people to do. Dove still holds a large number of bells (circa 2,400) with estimated cast dates which may be better reflected with their founders periods of activity. It will take some time for the team to go through all of these, but is a project that the team is tackling.