Lost Rings

What constitutes a "lost" ring of bells? Funnily enough, it isn't simply a ring that no longer exists. While many rings of bells have been recast or destroyed (the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 being the primary cause of the latter), others have simply been transferred elsewhere, either when the Tower in which they were hung was demolished or re-purposed, or when a new ring was installed. Indeed, a number of "lost" rings of bells are still exactly where they've always been, but have simply been rehung for chiming – these rings have therefore been lost only to the art of full-circle ringing.

The database behind these pages gives as much detail about such bells as I could find, all gathered from various sources. I don't pretend to have covered every single lost ring in the Branches listed, but there are a fair few. Where one or more bells from a lost ring have been transferred to another Tower, to form part of either a currently-existing ring or yet another lost one, links have been provided to the appropriate pages of this and the Bristol Rural Tower Locator sections.

The table below gives a summary of the number of Towers that I have researched within each Branch of the Gloucester & Bristol Diocesan Association of Church Bell Ringers (which, it should be noted, is not necessarily all of the Towers in that Branch), broken down by the number of bells in each ring. Additional bells separate from the main ring (such as Clock, Sanctus or Service bells), whether or not hung for full-circle ringing, are not included in these totals; however, details of such bells may be found within the tower information pages themselves. The name of each Branch provides a link to the full list of rings that I have researched in that Branch.

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