Bellringing at Hoar Cross, Staffordshire

The village Hoar Cross is a scattering of buildings across a square mile or so of Staffordshire countryside. It's not a very large place and one might expect it to have a quaint little church. Yet it doesn't. The church is a vast, imposing building, built of local red sandstone, and featuring a large central tower. It looks a bit like Liverpool Anglican Cathedral on a smaller scale.

The church has a ring of bells to match it. There are 6 bells in total and they are the fourth heaviest full-circle ring of 6 bells in the world (after St. Buryan (Cornwall), Queen Camel (Somerset) and Brailes (Warwickshire)). The tenor - the largest bell - weights 28-1-17, or 1443kg in modern terms. Even the treble - the smallest bell - weights 8-2-12 (437kg), which is heavier than the tenor at many rings of 6. They were all originally cast by Taylors of Loughborough in 1875, and the two smallest bells were recast by the same foundry in 1935.

Due to the size of both the bells and the village, there isn't a local ringing band here. But in about 2010 Andrew Ogden, a local ringer and bellhanger for Taylors, carried out some much-needed maintenance on the bells and started organizing regular ringing on them. This takes place twice a month; on the second and forth Sundays after the main service. The ringing in this video was recorded on the second Sunday in August 2012, and it's a full extent of Grandsire Doubles with a tenor cover.