Introduction

The "Clockroom" Teaching Centre is an exciting collaboration between the Cathedral Guild of Bell Ringers with the support Cathedral Chapter, local schools and various funding bodies.  It will provide an invaluable resource for teaching new recruits and allowing experienced ringers to practice more advanced ringing without the need for other ringers being present.  Primarily aimed at providing new recruits to ring the Cathedral's bells it is hoped that it will become a widely used facility open to other towers and local ringing societies.

Beginnings

The initial trials and the first course were carried out on a dumb bell kindly loaned by David Bagley attached to a computer with "Abel" simulator.  The first course used this to great success.

Prototyping

The success of the initial trial was very encouraging and it was decided to proto-type our own dumb bell facility.  This was designed and built by Neil Sparey of NDS Engineering, Chris Phillips (Steeple Keeper) and Jim Wheeler the designer of the Wheeler Clapper.   The design includes a "rope slider" which is very easy to reset and allows the dumb bells to remain up between touches.  The two dumb bells are enclosed in a metal cage as a safety feature.  The whole structure is installed in a completely non-intrusive way and does not require any drilling or permanent fixings in the medieval or Victorian fabric.

Current classes using the prototype

The Future

The next stage involves a complete ring of 6 dumb bells in addition to the 2 training bells.  This will give us the ability to run practices on the Cathedral Bells and training sessions concurrently.