legends · 4 min read ·
Peal Book
A bell ringers' peal book records a ninth bell in a ring of eight.
**St. Wilfrid's, Harrow-on-the-Marsh — Peal Book (Tower Captain: Eric Dunning)**
*Eight bells, tenor 18 cwt. All records of peals and quarter-peals rung at this tower.*
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**14 Sept — Quarter peal of Plain Bob Major (1,260 changes), 47 minutes.**
Treble: A. Marsh. 2: P. Gale. 3: C. Roper. 4: L. Fenn. 5: B. Heath. 6: R. Quill. 7: S. Doyle. Tenor: E. Dunning (conductor).
*Rung for the Harvest Festival. Clean. No faults.*
**28 Sept — Touch of Grandsire Triples, 504 changes.**
Rung by the same band. *A good touch. The tenor was slightly heavy.*
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**12 Oct — Quarter peal, Stedman Triples (1,260 changes), 51 minutes.**
Treble: A. Marsh. 2: P. Gale. 3: C. Roper. 4: L. Fenn. 5: B. Heath. 6: R. Quill. 7: S. Doyle. Tenor: E. Dunning (conductor).
**Conductor's note:** Rung without fault. It was only afterwards, in the ringing chamber, that Ms. Doyle asked who had rung the ninth. I said there were only eight bells. She said she had heard nine.
We went down to the ground floor and listened to the recording that Mr. Heath makes of each quarter. The recording has the sound of eight bells and, above them, high and bright and very faint, a bell that is not ours.
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**19 Oct — Practice night.**
Eight bells rung, rounds and call changes. The ninth sounded again: a small, clear note, a half-step above the treble, entering at the second whole pull and keeping time with the rest. We rang without stopping, as is the rule. At the end, we stood the bells.
**Conductor's note:** I climbed to the belfry. The treble is the smallest of our bells, 5 cwt. I inspected the frame, the headstocks, the louvres. There is no ninth bell. There is no space in the frame for a ninth bell. But in the dust of the belfry floor, near the treble's pit, there was a clean round patch about the size of a bell mouth, and a little rope, tied in a loop, hanging from a beam that is not part of the frame.
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**26 Oct — Quarter peal, Plain Bob Major.**
Rung to mark the end of the Autumn term. The ninth bell was audible from the first change. The band rang steadily. When we came to the final course the ninth sounded in the gap between the seventh and the tenor, where the tenor, at the back of the change, is sounded by me.
I found my rope had moved in my hand. I was ringing a stroke behind. I corrected and the ninth bell corrected with me. I felt it in the rope, a small tug in the rhythm, as if someone were keeping time beside me.
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**Diocesan report (Rev. M. Garrow, Bell Advisor, 30 October)**
I attended the tower on 29 October and inspected the ring. Eight bells, in good order. The frame is sound. I inspected the roof space and the floor beneath. There is no ninth bell.
I stood in the ringing chamber while the band rang a touch. I counted nine. I then went up to the belfry and stood among the bells while they rang, and counted eight. Nine bells in the chamber, eight in the belfry. The ninth is audible only below the bell chamber floor.
I asked the tower captain whether the church had ever had a ninth bell. He said, in 1743, a small bell had been hung on the beam as a sanctus bell and had been cast out in the Reformation. Nobody had known it. The parish book mentions it once.
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**Peal book — final entry of the season**
**2 Nov — Peal of Plain Bob Major (5,040 changes), 2 hours 52 minutes.**
Treble: A. Marsh. 2: P. Gale. 3: C. Roper. 4: L. Fenn. 5: B. Heath. 6: R. Quill. 7: S. Doyle. Tenor: E. Dunning (conductor).
**Conductor's note:** Eight rang. Nine were heard.
The peal was clean. The ninth bell rang every change. At the 4,920th change I looked across the circle and saw that there was a ninth rope in the ringing chamber, hanging between the second and the third. It had not been there before. It was moving. It was being pulled by someone who was not in the room.
We rang to the end. At the final stroke we stood the bells, one by one. The ninth rope stood too, and its sally came to rest at the ceiling, at exactly the height of our hands, for the next ringer, and the rest of the band looked at me, and I picked up the book and began to write down the name.