Abbreviations used and definitions
Abbreviations and definitions are spelt out here for:
- Church
- Bells
- tower vicinity
- source of information
To return to this place on the page, click on the phrase
To top which is at the top of each section.
Extra belfry facilities To top
This includes anything other than the bells, fittings and frames to be found
in the belfry, for example:
- sound control
- a simulator (may include how many bells)
- CCTV camera and display monitor in the ringing chamber,
mostly found in ringing centres
- chiming apparatus such as Ellacombe
Any Ringing Centre
is likely to have several of these listed
on an additional page describing their particular facilities.
Parish Name To top
The parish name used is the one in common use in 2006
Dedication To top
The parish name is given on the 1st line with the church dedication below.
Abbreviations in the Dedication:
| B.V.M.= Blessed Virgin Mary |
| S.M.V. = St. Mary the Virgin |
Ordnance Survey Grid Ref To top
This is given to enable readers to locate the church on the Ordnance Survey Maps.
Chapman County codes To top
These are abbreviations for the full county name. In the Oxford Diocese
these are:
| BED | Bedfordshire |
| BKM | Buckinghamshire |
| BRK | Berkshire |
| HRT | Hertfordshire |
| OXN | Oxfordshire |
| WRK | Warwickshire |
Jurisdiction To top
is the authority which cares for this church.
Abbreviations in the Jurisdiction:
| CCT | Churches Conservation Trust |
| Coll | Oxford College |
| FFC | Friends of Friendless Churches |
| Mus | Museum |
| OD | Oxford Diocese |
| P | Privately owned |
| RC | Roman Catholic |
Church facilities To top
may include:
 |
a toilet (but you may need to get a different key from that to the tower) |
 |
kitchen facilities. |
 |
a children's play area |
 |
please park in nearby car park for church or village hall |
State To top
Meaning of letters in the 'state' column:
| hung full-circle |
other hanging method |
| R: ringable clockwise circle |
C: hung for chiming only |
A: anti-clockwise circle
ringable unless UA |
HD: hung dead |
| I: irregularly ordered circle |
T: tubular bells (no weight given) |
| L: ropes in a line |
CT: clock tower |
| U: unringable |
MS: hung for mechanical swinging |
| F: temporarily unringable |
M: bells in museum |
N: Not known, not rung
maybe no ringers? |
|
| D: redundant church |
|
| P: private or secular ring |
|
Letters are coloured red to draw your attention to a
state making the bells unavailable for full-circle ringing.
Redundant churches have a 'D' combined with an 'R', 'A', 'U' or an 'F',
the 'D' and 'P' are red only if the bells
are unringable. The 'D' or 'P' is the last letter.
Towers with bells not hung for full-circle ringing only have
a link to another file if there is something special to see at that tower.
Availability and Restrictions To top
No entry on this line means visits may be at any time without restrictions,
other than the usual ones of subject to no clash with other uses of the
church and the permission of the authority responsible for the tower.
The following are examples of why the bells may not available
for visiting bands including:
- Unringable
- bell restoration planned for sometime in 2006
- Church building works in progress, for example on the roof
- maximum of 30 minutes’ open ringing for visiting bands on one day
- No peals allowed
- Ringing chamber open to the church so may not available when church
is in use for services or other activities
- No ringing during office hours Monday to Friday
- Ringing Mon to Fri during evenings or holidays of nearby college/school
- Minimum of 6 weeks’ notice for applications to ring
- Only one visiting band per month
Ringing Chamber Access To top
GF: means a ground floor ring.
Other possibilities are:
spiral staircase, with number of steps if there are
more than the average number (about 35?)
Ladder, may be combined with trapdoor usually closed during ringing
Straight staircase
Draught To top
A blank entry means an average draught.
Short may mean sally almost wraps around the wheel.
Long means may cause problems for inexperienced ringers.
Long may additionally have the phrase 'guides' meaning that there
are rope guides to help the ringer
Loudness/audibility To top
This is how loud the bells sound inside the ringing chamber
on a scale of 1 - 5 1=faint, 5=very loud. It is a subjective measure of how
well you can hear the conductor over the bells. This is most important for
those ringing call changes.
Date of last restoration of the bells, their gear or frame.
To top
A blank means we have no information. Usually given as a four digit year.
Recent rehanging should indicate that the bells will be easy to ring.
However, sometimes extra
bells (usually trebles) are added in a new frame above the old, which
may make those bells 'flighty' and difficult for beginners.
Bell Number To top
given in the form '2 of 6' where 2 is the bell number and the
6 is the number of bells in the ring.
Canon To top
this is the number of canons in the crown of this bell,
may also be the word 'Off' in cases where canons have been removed or the bell was cast without canons.
Diameter of the bell To top
measured in inches, and given in fractions rather than a decimal number.
Bell weights To top
In the 'Tower Summary' pages, the column for bells is in 2 lines,
the first line lists number of bells, the second line gives
the weight of the tenor, in units of cwts rounded to the
nearest quarter.
In individual tower pages the number of bells is enclosed in brackets,
like this (6), followed by the weight of the tenor expressed in cwt-qr-lb.
In tables of bell information the weight is also expressed in cwt-qr-lb.
In some cases this is followed by a # symbol. This means it is an
approximate or estimated weight usually by some
formula from the diameter.
Tables of 'listed' bells have weights converted from decimals into fractions
on this CD
For further details consult the
authority from whom we got this weight which should be listed on any page
with a table of bell weights.
Weights about which we have no information are left blank.
note on units:
weights
cwt-qr-lb are Imperial measures of weight, here are the metric
equivalents:
20cwts = 1 ton = 1017 kg 1000 kg = 1tonne
1 hundredweight (cwt) = 4 qrs = 112 lbs = 50.85 kg
1 quarter (qr) = 28 lbs = 12.71 kg
1 pound (lb) is 454 gm 1 kg is 2.2 lb
lengths
bell diameters are normally given in inches and fractions of an inch.
1 inch (") = 25.4 mm 3/4" = 18.4 mm
43 1/2" = 1066 mm (to nearest mm)
Date cast To top
the date usually given as a year, such as, "1635". May also be written
"c1635" which means about 1635 or as "14th C" which means that date
is only known to within 100 years.
Founder To top
Name of the founder, usually written out as "Ellis Knight I" or "J Carter".
Foundry Location To top
usually just a town, such as "Wokingham" or "Loughborough".
Bell inscriptions To top
These are usually given in upper case letters. There is no attempt to
reproduce the actual font or letter spacing used on the bell. There
may be comments on typography below the table of bell weights.
Inscriptions in F.Sharpe's books used a / symbol to indicate the end
of a line of inscription when the line was too long to fit easily on the
page. Inscriptions on this CD are entered with an HTML forced linebreak
symbol at the end of a line which cannot be seen on the screen. Readers
with very wide screens will see the lines as they are on the bell but those
with narrower width screens may find that their browser has broken the line
before the end in order to get all the text in.
special symbols in inscriptions
These are usually in italic and enclosed in [ ].
[border] is a decorative border of some kind, scrolls, leaves or geometric
designs
[©] is an impression of a coin usually the head of the current
reigning monarch when the bell was cast.
Symbols such as [F3] refers to the pattern “F3” in
F.Sharpe’s The Church bells of Oxfordshire where the
“F” may be any letter from
A to V and refers to a page of patterns. Within each page numbers go from
1 to 15 or so. If the symbol is underlined you can click on it to link
to the page of founders’ marks and borders
[L] is a leaf pattern border
[M] indicates a “Founders’ mark” at this point.
This may be a bell or a coat of arms or an animal.
Parking To top
This column tries to explain where it is possible to park safely without
annoying the neighbours.
If there is a
please park in nearby Car Park for church or village hall.
Other To top
This column is for special things which only a few towers have
such as a 'ringing centre', web site or other useful information.
The name of a nearby pub (if any) is shown between "" like this: “The 5 Bells”.
Source To top
This column lists the authority from which we obtained the information,
usually one of the county books about bells. They may include a page number.
Examples
FS BRK p40 'Church Bells of Berkshire' Fred Sharpe
Cocks p295 'Church bells of Buckinghamshire' A.H.Cocks (rarely lists weights)
Hearn p49 'The Rings and Chimes of Buckinghamshire Churches'
(has some approximate weights)
FS OXN p12 'Church Bells of Oxfordshire' Fred Sharpe
NP 'Pevsner Architectural Guides' Nicolas Pevsner
Bell weight formula To bell weights
Andrew Bull estimates weights using the
following:
weight (pounds) = diameter (inches) (raised to the fourth
power) x strike-note (Hertz) x constant.
strike-note is taken to be half the nominal frequency, so, for
example, a typical six-bell tenor of around 36 inches diameter in A would
have nominal 880 Hz, and strike-note 440 Hz.
constant depends on the thickness of the bell (front bells are
proportionally thicker in a ringing peal to give them more power), profile,
etc. It is usually in the range of around 1.4 x
10-6 (for a modern treble to a heavy
true-harmonically tuned twelve) to 1.15 x 10-6
(for a thin, poorly-designed 18th century tenor bell that later had the guts
tuned out of it). For any given bell, I derive a constant from a bell by the
same founder, of the same era, and in a similar position in the ring, for
which I have known, measured data.
Note that the accuracy of this method relies heavily on an accurate
value for diameter, as this is raised to the fourth power.
The basic formula was derived by Hervey Bagot from statistical analysis of a
number of bells, though he was not the first to discover the basic
relationship between weight, diameter and note.
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