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It is if you follow our instructions. Accidents can happen but these are rare. The main ‘injury’ we see are blisters and a little rope burn from time to time. Again, it’s rare. We want you to be safe and enjoy it, so we take it seriously whilst having fun.

More often than not, they’ll stand there in admiration that you’ve taken up the skill, and be glad to know they won’t have to be ringing all the time. The more ringers there are, the more the load is shared. You may find that everybody has their own feedback for you after watching you ring as we all learn slightly differently. Feel free to listen (they tell you in good faith), but the most important feedback is from your tutor.

Not usually. Very few incidents have been recorded of this because ringers who have been taught well know what to do if something goes wrong. At Marston it isn’t far to the ceiling, so even if you were lifted off the ground (extremely rare) you won’t go far.

If anything were to break, it’s either the rope or the stay, which is a wooden length designed to hold the bell in a resting position, that would probably go first. These are inspected regularly for their safety. Accidents can happen, but again, are rare.

The bells are heavy but once you have them over the balance point then you don’t need a lot of strength. Think of it like driving a car. Find the biting point and away you go. From there, you simply use your skills to keep it moving along. You change the rope length as you ring – that’s like changing gears so you can go faster or slower.

Most ringers don’t go any higher than the floor where the bell-ropes are. Sometimes there are tasks like putting on bell muffles or fixing a rope but you are not asked to do anything you are not comfortable with, so if you want to keep your feet on the ground with the majority, then stay right there.

Please let us know. We always need people with technical skills to help maintain the bells. We can show you what needs doing. You may like to help keep the place clean by hoovering once a month. A little bit of admin support can also be useful.

Wear something comfortable. Jeans, t-shirt, and trainers is often a good bet. No flowing sleeves or high heels. You don’t want anything getting caught in the rope, and you’ll also be stood up whilst you ring, so be comfortable.

We keep the vestry open whilst we are ringing and there is a toilet there with access to cups for a drink of water too. We sometimes provide cakes and biscuits during practices to improve the social aspect of the evening.

Make what you can. This is not a fitness class or club where you have to be there all night. When you first start to learn to ring, regular commitment is an absolute necessity, but once competent, if you cannot make our evening, why not pop to another local tower. You may get to a point where you’re ringing a different tower each night if you want to.

We do but it is important to note that we do expect a regular commitment, perhaps more so than you are expecting. The DofE Award requires young people to undertake an hour of activity each week, but you may only get to ring for half an hour on a training night, therefore, three months for DofE could actually be six months of ringing in order to be signed off. Please don’t let this put you off. If you are wanting to use ringing for your DofE, we would love to support you, but if you only ring for three months with us, you may not reach the level you would like to in order that you feel you have made progress towards your award. We usually recommend you double the length of time you expect to commit for that section (i.e.: 3 months becomes six, six becomes 12; not always the case but a good gauge). Bellringing can be a great activity to use to show progression across Bronze, Silver, and Gold, committing yourself to a good couple of years, and a chance to ring in some magical locations.