Church bells

@Isatis our bell ringing practice regularly goes for 4 hours, ending at 10pm on a weeknight.

Our local bellrings could not be any worse at getting any sort of of melody / tune whatever you call music from bells. I imagine they are all quite drunk and having a laugh. They practice 3 times a week and have not got any better. The people who ring the bells for weddings know how to make the bells sound great, not sure how they manage to go from one extreme to the other. Booze and having a bloody good laugh is the only explanation, I may join them!

Not if they're having practice sessions during the week as OP claims.

But OP isn't.

I really don't believe you about the 6 continuous hours on New Year's Day. As I've pointed out, ringers just don't have the strength and stamina to do that at any time, let alone after seeing the New Year in.

OP does not suggest that the bells she is talking about were ringing overnight. They seem to be a peal of bells being rung by bellringers, not the chimes of a clock.

This was allegedly on a Sunday. Practice sessions are during the week, partly in preparation for Sunday services.

And it can't have happened on the Sunday morning, because then there would be ringing all the way through church services which no vicar would put up with.

It's near-impossible to ring recognisable tunes on church bells (unless it is a carillon, which is a rather different set-up). They're so heavy that the most you can do is slow them down or speed them up slightly, so effectively you can only "move" your bell's ring one place in any given sequence - e.g if you ring 4th on one round, you can ring 5th or 3rd in the next one, but not second or sixth. To add to the complications, there will be an interval between the rope being pulled and the bell actually ringing, because it is fixed to a wheel and it is actually the wheel that is being turned.

The church was there probably before your house was even built.
You're being extremely unreasonable.
There is a church opposite my house, it ding dongs merrily away on a Sunday morning, a Thursday evening for practice and random times for weddings and funerals.
After a couple of weeks, I never noticed them any more, even with my windows open.
So yes, you're being extremely unreasonable.

You're missing the fact that it just won't have been going on as long as OP claims, for the reasons I and others have set out in various posts.

The thing is, bells just aren't rung for "several hours" at a time nonstop. Bellringers are only human and most bells are bloody heavy, plus you have to stand to ring them. Who has the stamina to heave bells for 5.5 hours as OP alleges? The longest you'll ever get being rung at one stretch is a peal of around 3-3.5 hours, and they're relatively rare because they're difficult and only a few ringers can manage them.

A church will have been there for anything up to 1000 years.
Bells are traditionally used to call the faithful to prayer. On Sunday there may be am & pm services and during the week the bellringers will practice for 2-3 hours.

Additionally bellringing teams will visit other towers to ring the bells; it develops their skills and gives them opportunities to ring different types of bells. Towers usually have an even number of bells 6-8-10-12 depending on size.

You should consider yourself lucky to be part of our heritage not be on here batching about it.
Why not go over next practice evening & introduce yourself & have a go? Ringers are welcomeing and tend to go to the pub after practice.

I think a lot of people commenting haven’t actually lived near a church, they might think the bells are a lovely sound but after listening to them for several hours I suspect they would find it a bit grating.

Years ago I moved in with my ex boyfriend who lived opposite a church and didn’t realise how noisy it actually was. People are saying that bells don’t ring for hours on end but in my experience they did and I found it difficult.
I liked listening to them for short periods but when I had a 5am start and was going to bed at 9pm and the bells were ringing up till 10pm it was difficult, even with double glazing you could hear it clearly and couldn’t have the windows open in summer.
The neighbours also said they found it irritating and wished it didn’t go on for as long.

We lived in the best location for a night out but no one ever wanted to stay the night on a Saturday because they didn’t want waking up at 8am to loud ringing bells.

I couldn’t complain because as people have pointed out the church was there first and it is heritage, I was glad when I moved but I could still hear them half a mile away across town!

Noise is a strange thing and you can get used to it. We lived next to a printing works, our bedroom window was about 1.5m from their windows, being in the Med area our bedroom windows were open with shutters closed. They printed a newspaper 6 days a week, starting at 3am, no Sunday edition and we got used to this noise which was likened by a visitor to trying to sleep on a Tube station when heard during the day, even our new baby had no problem. However if it was Bank Holiday Monday and they didn't print at 3am on Monday we were awakened by the lack of noise!

No this is all l get

What a way with words! 😂

Given she's being made anxious by something harmless, CBT would be the right track. I posted my question before she told us it was a hostel. Women's Aid might be able to signpost her to a counsellor as might Shelter or similar if it's a homelessness issue.

Completely unreasonable. It's a timeless cultural heritage practice.

No you didn't you had a chiming clock

😆 Beautifully put!

Oh, the boringness of trotting out the current in-vogue words, mindlessly hoping to sound frightfully superior.
The intelligent among us know that 'privilege' is not involved at all in this thread, try to join us.

I don't think we've ever had a murder in the bell tower of our church!

You could contact the tower captain to ask why the bells are being rung so frequently for such a long time. To ring a peal takes three hours non-stop but peals aren't rung that often. It may be that there is something special going on at the church or in the local ringing guild that is causing them to be rung. We had quarter peal week in our ringing guild a couple of weeks ago and there were a lot of quarter peals rung - but they only take 45 minutes. That was only for a week though.

Can't you even click 'see all' of the OP's posts?

Unless you live here... dammit wrong link. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1169498870176748?multi_permalinks=2044700515989908&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen