Help: Conventions used

This page aims to explain what information can be found on this website, and the conventions used in presenting it.

The list of towers includes a search facility which has its own help page. We also make available PDF county lists which includes a table of rings by geographical area. We continue to provide an A-Z listing which is laid out very much as in the printed Dove’s Guide. We have divided it into one section per initial letter to keep page sizes reasonable and reduce loading time. Any entry with significant changes since the most recent printed edition is prefixed with the date of its latest amendment. A list of significant updates is provided for those who wish to see what has changed.

The description below indicates what is shown and the abbreviations and conventions used. In general, wherever green text appears within these webpages it indicates a clickable link to an associated webpage or feature.

Bell collections

A tower may have one or more collections of bells. Dove defines each type as follows:

Full-circle ring:: a ring of bells hung for change ringing in the English style (or a single bell hung in that style).
Lightweight ring:: a full-circle ring of bells with a tenor of less than 1 cwt if the ring contains 3–8 bells, 2 cwt for a ring of 10 and 3 cwt for a ring of 12 or above.
Carillon:: a collection of at least 23 cast bronze bells hung in fixed suspension, played with a traditional keyboard of batons, and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoniously together (as defined by the World Carillon Society).
Clock chime:: a collection of 2 or more bells (of any shape) used to chime the hour and possibly quarters.
Tubular chime:: a collection of 1 or more tubular bells that forms a chime.
Hemispherical chime:: a collection of 1 or more hemispherical bells that forms a chime.
Chime:: a collection of standard shaped bells that do not fall into the above categories.
Display bells:: bells (of any shape) that are on public display. (There are some display bells which by request or by judgement of the team are considered to be at risk of theft, and therefore do not have their details published, although are captured in the database.)
Other bells:: one or more ancillary bells in the same place as a collection as defined above.

It is possible for individual bells in a tower to belong to more than one collection. Dove currently prioritises the definition in the order above.

Place names

All rings are shown in alphabetical order by place name, region (e.g. county or state) and dedication. Spaces are significant, thus East Hoathly is listed before Easthampstead. Cathedrals are listed ahead of other towers in a given place. Each ring is listed once under its primary place name: thus Hull is shown under its full name of Kingston upon Hull and, although one can find a result when searching for Hull, it is not listed returned as a separate or distinct entry. This means that there are as many towers as there are entries in the list. The search facility may be useful for finding towers which are apparently missing. With a very few exceptions we favour the place name as found on a current Ordnance Survey Landranger (1:50,000 scale) map. We do not normally use hyphens around words like on, upon or in the when they appear in place names.

Dedications

We normally regard the latest edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory as the authoritative reference for the dedication of churches in the Church of England.

Geographical regions

All towers other than mobile towers are given a geographical area to disambiguate places with the same or a similar name, and to help readers locate unfamiliar towers. We have a separate page on the use of county-level regions in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Number of bells

We show the maximum number of ringing bells in the ring tuned to a diatonic scale. However, we have discontinued showing rings of 12 which also have an extra treble as a ring of 13 because this did not generally find favour among ringers. Accidentals are named with reference to the number of the bell that they usually replace. For example, we refer to sharp seconds (written 2♯) in rings of twelve, rather than flat thirds, because this bell replaces the second to get a light eight.

Tenor weights

Weights are given as precisely as possible in hundredweight, quarters and pounds (formatted cwt–qr–lb). When the weight is simply a number (possibly with fractional part) this indicates approximate or estimated weight in hundredweight. These the imperial or long hundredweight, with 28 pounds in a quarter, and four quarters (or 112 lb) in a hundredweight, making a hundredweight approximately 50.8 kg.

Where available, we prefer to reply on authoritative primary sources, such as foundry records for the weight of bells.

Tenor notes

Where known, tenor notes are shown relative to International standard pitch, A=440Hz, unless indicated otherwise. Also, the nominal of each bell is shown on the tower details page when it is available. Bill Hibbert's webpage contains further information about strike note, partials, the nominal, and the pitch of a bell. Nigel Taylor's website, particularly his page on church bells, has a discussion of tuning and temperament.

Tuning of a ring

A ring normally comprises a set of bells tuned to a major scale with the tenor as the key note or tonic. When this is not the case, we attempt to describe the ring by comparison a ring tuned a major scale, for example, with a phrase like tuning: 1-5 of 6 – the standard tuning for a ring of 5 would be 2-6 of 6. Non-standard tuning is rarely the intention of the bell tuner, and these descriptions are often only approximate.

Bell Details

In almost all instances, we now also have a table showing further details about individual bells (and not necessarily confined to the ring itself).

Ground floor rings, portable rings, simulators and toilets

GF indicate rings which are rung from the ground floor. This does not mean there is necessarily step-free access to the ringing room.

P indicates that the ring is portable.

S indicates towers which possess a simulator.

T indicates towers where a toilet is available for use by ringers, although it may be necessary to ask for a key.

Practice nights

We note the day or days of the week that each the tower practices. If the practice is not weekly, we attempt to describe simple variations such as 1st & 3rd if the practice is only twice a month, or alt if the practice is only held in alternate weeks. Towers with more complicated practice patterns are encouraged to use a website of their own to provide further details. Practice time is normally 19:30 until 21:00. Starts differing from 19:30 by 30 minutes or more are shown. Visitors should be advised that many towers do not practise during Holy Week.

Where we have been informed of straightforward practice sharing arrangements between two or more towers (such as particular weeks of a month) we have attempted to indicate what that arrangement is.

We do not display practice information for towers under restoration or where ringing is otherwise suspended.

Additional data

Dove has traditionally shown extra information about any specially interesting feature of a tower or ring. We now restrict the amount of such extra information not least because of the capability of visiting towers' individual websites where that information can be spelt out in much greater detail. A link to a website (its 'URL') is shown where we have been informed of it unless - possibly on further investigation - we find that a further 'login' is necessary on the part of the user (which we deem inappropriate for 'general use'). A regular check is made to ensure that that website is still extant and, where the check fails, we amend our database so as to remove the URL. That removal is usually included in the detailed changes list, and it is done without notifying the tower concerned. Therefore as and when a tower's webpage URL is changed, the onus is on the tower's webmaster to inform us of the revised URL. If the tower has a page on more than one website (eg, its own, plus one under its affiliated society's umbrella), then we ask that the relevant tower captain let us know which they would prefer us to show.

We continue to use the expression used originally by Ron Dove himself of referring to “the heaviest ring of n bells” using the tenor weight alone as the yardstick for that comparison (as contrasted with the total weight of all bells comprising the ring).

Grid References

A six-figure grid reference is provided for all towers in the British Isles except for personally owned lightweight rings. The Ordnance Survey provide a useful explanation of the National Grid, as used in Great Britain.

Overhaul Year

When using the search facility, the details page will show - should we have it - an indication of the year in which the ring as a whole was most recently overhauled. In using the word 'overhaul', we do NOT see this as (for example) simply changing one or two bells from plain to modern bearings, but feel it to be more comprehensive yet without being too proscriptive about what qualifies and what does not. This is as far as we feel we can reasonably go towards providing any indication of the likely 'go' of the bells, which is a topic in which the capability of the ringer is also a relevant consideration!

Affiliation to Association, Guild or Society

As from November 2007, we have indicated tower affiliations when we know about them. We can show multiple affiliations for a tower, where appropriate. In general we do not indicate the affiliations of three-bell towers, but will happily add them on request. Please inform us of any misattributions: we would prefer that notification to come from an officer of the society or tower concerned.

This facility is envisaged as helping to find tower contact details when arranging visits, especially where there is no tower webpage shown. To facilitate this, we provide a link to the association website. Information on association website is maintained centrally by the Central Council, rather than by the Dove Team.

Unringable rings

Whether or not a ring is ringable is inherently subjective. It is the tower authorities who are responsible for determining whether the bells may be rung, and on occasion they may deem a ring to be unringable for reasons other than mechanical or structural issues. We prefer to focus on what opportunities may exist for ringing at the tower, and to describe the situation as accurately as possible, for example as ringing not currently permitted, rather than using a blanket terms such as unringable when this is not strictly the case.

This information is provided on a best efforts basis, and no guarantee is made that towers which are not listed as unringable are safe to be rung. This is particularly true of towers with three or fewer bells which may see little or no ringing.

Corrections

All information should be treated with due caution as we can rarely be certain that our data is absolutely accurate in all respects. However, we hope that by making the data widely and easily available, any errors can be identifed and corrected.

Amendments should be notified by email or using the Dove Team link provided for this purpose at the bottom left corner of every page on this site. We do not actively monitor tower websites or social media for tower updates, so please contact us directly about any change. In order that a machine searchable record can be kept of all such alterations, please do not submit them by telephone or by post. If we update the site with your information, we ask that you check that we have incorporated the changes correctly.

Please accept our thanks in advance for any amendment sent. We may need to ask you for the source of your correction in order to verify that the detail is more authoritative or up-to-date than that already shown, so please ensure that you identify yourself, and your relationship (if any) with the tower concerned. If you have not received a response within two weeks, please accept our apologies and be kind enough to send a reminder.

Any data supplied to us may be retained indefinitely as part of the Dove database, and may be made available for third-party use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License or included in future printed versions of Dove’s Guide.

A copy is normally kept of all submissions and email exchanges for data audit purposes. Should a subsequent enquirer takes issue with any amendment, we can refer to the previous correspondence to explain how, why and when the change occurred, and what the supporting evidence was.

Coverage

The tower search page allows you to filter results by bell details which provides an indication of how much progress has been made populating the Dove bell register, and where gaps remain. Complete means that we have an exact weight, diameter, nominal frequency, year of casting (which may be approximate), founder, and information on canons for each bell in the ring. This includes accidentals, but not additional bells such as clock or sanctus bells.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all who have supplied information, particularly those who have been mailing corrections since these pages first appeared on the internet. It is the goodwill that ringers throughout the world have ably demonstrated over the years that enables us to maintain the accuracy of what we show. We also acknowledge the use of various other third-party data sources, software products and libraries.

Availability of raw data

An export of the raw data used in the tower search facility is available for download. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which allows for commercial and other for-profit use of the data.