St. Anne's Ringing School was established in 2023.  This followed on from a major restoration and augmentation project for the bells of St. Anne's Parish Church.  We went from an 8-bell tower to a 10-bell tower and now have a lovely, easy going set of bells with a light front six, making St Anne's Parish Church the perfect home for the Ringing School.   

We have a simulator system, which means we can practice without annoying our neighbours as the bells are silent outside the tower, but sound the same inside the tower. We achieve this by tying the clapper on the bell so it can't move, having sensors fitted to each bell and using simulated sound inside the ringing room which sounds very similar to actual ringing.

In addition we have a Saxilby dumb bell known as "Edwin" which we use to help with the teaching of initial bell handling skills. It can also be used for solo practice of methods  with Abel software providing the rest of the band (all of whom are perfect ringers and never go wrong!).

We also have a CCTV system set up in the bell chamber, which means you can see the motion of the bells in the Ringing Room. We find this is an invaluable teaching tool in the early stages, as it helps the learner understand what is happening to their bell "upstairs" when they pull on the rope.

We have developed an Affiliation Scheme and work very closely with the local towers who have chosen to affiliate to us, as these towers share our vision of working together to help one another and collectively develop  the next generation of ringers. 

Meet our teachers - LtoR - Ellis, Monica and Stuart

photo used with kind permission from Chris Darley

Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) Teaching Hub

We delighted to be recognised as an ART teaching hub : St Anne's Ringing School

We follow the ART Teaching Hub Charter:

• Keep and maintain equipment and facilities to teach bell handling and change ringing
• Hold practices focused on the Learning the Ropes curriculum
• Support practices with theory or hold theory workshops
• Work within ART Policies and Guidelines
• Teaching carried out or supervised by ART Members using ART Training Scheme techniques
• New ringers are registered on the Learning the Ropes scheme
• Promote group teaching with an intensive teaching approach
• If they can, give a donation to ART annually
• Supporting learning for other towers