South Woodham Ferrers Handbell Team
Making Music Together all Year Through
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How it started
Is it Difficult to Play?
The handbell is an amazing instrument. It is easy to learn how to ring and tunes
can be rung successfully by novice teams very quickly. Teams can be formed using
as few as eight bells, or up to seven octaves and eighty-
Bells have been used for centuries in different countries, cultures and religions, to communicate, to worship, to celebrate and to make music. In ancient Greece and Rome, in China and in Egypt bells were used in many religious ceremonies and to announce different times of the day. The Christian Church has used bells for this purpose as well as to ring out good news, to summon people to worship and to toll repeatedly for the dead. The British Isles have been described as the "Ringing Isles", with the composer Handel describing the handbell as the English national instrument.
In the 17th century the art of change ringing, as practised by tower bell ringers,
was started. It has been suggested that the ringers, unwilling to practise on winter
evenings in the cold and draughty belfries, used small hand held bells for their
practices, in the more comfortable surroundings of houses and local hostelries. Tune
ringing on hand bells was a natural progression for some bellringers to make. In
recent years, other instruments have been invented in England to complement the tune
ringing hand bell-
Is it difficult to play?
