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| Mark's first quarter peal |
For some people, the ultimate goal of ringing is to ring a tower's bells in every possible order without repeating. On six bells this is 720 permutations or pulls of the rope (changes) and would take around half an hour. St. Peter's has 8 bells and so 40,320 combinations could be rung without repetition. This would take a staggering 25 hours! This is obviously not practical and so a Peal is defined as an extended performance with no repetitions. It must last 5000 changes on 8 bells or 5040 changes on seven or fewer and takes 3 hours. A performance of 1250 changes on 8 bells or 1260 on 7 or fewer is defined as a quarter peal and lasts about 45 minutes.
A listing of all the recorded peals rung at St. Peters can be found on the Felstead database. Details of recent peals are on on our website, here. Although some members of the St. Peter's band have a great peal record, peals are not often rung by our band together. However, we do try to ring quarter peals regularly, usually before Evensong once a month. They are often rung in celebration of an event, for example a birth, Christening or Marriage, to consolidate a method being learnt in practice, or just for fun.
Here are the latest two quarter peals rung at St Peter's by the St. Peter's band and friends.
For details of quarters by year please see the links below.
Sunday 25th April 2010 Spliced Surprise Major 1280 changes in 44 minutes Treble - John Cousins 2 - Helen Harpole 3 - Rowena Marshall 4 - Ian Jorysz 5 - John Harpole (c) 6 - Andrew Martin 7 - Steve Nash 8 - Paul Trueman (5m: R,S,Y,N,C)
| Sunday 28th March 2010 Cambridge Surprise Major 1280 changes in 44 minutes Treble - Vic Dale 2 - Rowena Marshall 3 - Helen Harpole 4 - Alan Ball 5 - Mark Robbins 6 - Paul Trueman 7 - Ian Jorysz (c) 8 - John Harpole Rung for Palm Sunday. First in method 5.
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