Bellringing at Lichfield Cathedral, Staffordshire

"Hello, these bells are good!"

The small city of Lichfield is not a particularly famous place, but it is well known amongst Bellringers for having a very nice ring of 10 bells in its cathedral. They were all cast by John Taylor's of Loughborough in 1947 and the largest bell weighs 31cwt 2 qrs 9lbs (about 1.6). They were a gift from the Freemasons of Lichfield, which replaced a similarly sized ring of 10. However, the bell frame - which is the oldest 10 bell frame in existence, dating from 1688 - was retained, hence the large and slightly uneven rope circle.

Lichfield Cathedral was my home tower for 7 years, before I moved away to university in 2008. After that, I still returned to Sunday service ringing and practice nights in the holidays. The ringing in this video was recorded on a practice night in July 2012. It's a 2-course touch of Stedman Caters.

A few other interesting things here are the clock case suspended from part of the ceiling, which gives bells 6, 7 and 8 a shorter draught, and my way of relieving boredom after about 9 minutes of holding my camera trying to make the visual element of this video interesting!