If you went by Trinity Church this past weekend you probably would have never guessed that there were bells ringing and that the tower was hosting a North American Guild of Change Ringers event with bell ringers from throughout North America and the United Kingdom. Thanks to special sound controls, the work of the ten to twelve bell ringers was muffled to those who weren’t actually in the bell tower.
The bells themselves are a set of change ringing bells made in England by the Taylor Bell Foundry. They are unlike the carillons first developed in the Low Countries, since it takes one person to operate each fully rotating bell and they don’t play music.
This form of bell ringing developed in seventeenth century England and instead of music, the bells perform a series of “changes” in the order they are rung in to create distinctive patterns, some short and simple and some long “quarter peals” or “peals” requiring hundreds to thousands of changes. Ringing the bells is a team effort, since the patterns being rung depend on each individual ringer knowing what everyone else is doing and what they have to do.
Installed last fall, the bells were a gift to the church from the Dill Faulkes Educational Trust and first officially rung on October 28, 2006. They are rung partially baffled before and after the church services on Sunday mornings and for special services like weddings, but most other times they are rung with the baffles in place, making the bells all but inaudible to passersby and even those in the church.
Fairly common in the United Kingdom with thousands of towers in both churches and civic buildings, change ringing bells are quite rare in North America, with only 50 bell towers housing them in the United States and Canada. New York has two, Trinity and in Putnam County at the Melrose School, and the tower at the foot of Wall Street has the distinction of being the only tower with twelve bells in the United States and the second in North America after Toronto’s St. James' Cathedral.
