Peal

Type of precisely timed bell ringing arrangement

In campanology (bell ringing), a peal is the special name given to a specific type of performance of change ringing which meets certain exacting conditions for duration, complexity and quality. The definition of a peal has changed considerably over the years and its standardisation was one of the motivating factors in the formation of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers in 1891. Currently, for a performance to be recognised as a peal by the Central Council it must consist of sufficient numerical sequences, or "changes" (at least 5,040 changes on up to seven working bells or 5,000 changes on higher numbers), meet a number of other criteria (collectively referred to as the decisions), and be published in The Ringing World. On typical tower bells a peal takes around three hours to ring; the time depends on several factors including the number of changes and the weight of the bells, which affects the speed of ringing. In addition to ordinary peals, ringers often ring quarter peals, which are a quarter of the length of a full peal, making them easier to ring as most quarter peals take around 45 minutes to complete. A ring of English style full circle bells is sometimes referred to as a peal of bells.

Originally a peal referred to a sequence of changes of any length, now often referred to as a touch. A touch being more than a plain course, but not a quarter or full peal. However, the original meaning is still in use today in call change ringing. The most famous and frequently rung call change peal, associated with the Devon Association of ringers, is named 60 on 3rds. Following the invention of the ringing method known as Grandsire Doubles, the term peal or "full peal" was applied to the ringing of sequences including each possible permutation of the set of bells exactly once. On five bells (Doubles), there are 120 permutations taking about four minutes to ring on tower bells. This is arrived at by the calculation 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 = 5! = 120 unique permutations. These figures rapidly increase as more bells are added. With the standardisation of the term "peal", ringing all possible permutations is referred to as the "extent". For seven bells the extent is 7! = 5,040 changes and is thus synonymous with a peal. For lower numbers of bells several extents are rung to make up the number of changes in a peal. For larger numbers of bells a peal is a subset of the extent. The extent on eight bells comprises 40,320 changes, and would be referred to today as a long length peal. Despite this, it has been successfully rung as a continuous performance both on tower and on hand bells, 17 hours in duration on tower bells.

According to the best available knowledge in 2017, 6,929 peals of Grandsire Caters (on 10 bells) were rung in the 300 years following 11 January 1711. Grandsire Caters was the leading 10 bell method in each decade from 1711 to 1890, but Stedman Caters has proved more popular recently and on 9 July 2010 its cumulative peal total from 1711 pulled ahead of the running Grandsire total.

Another area of peal ringing is that of long length peals. These involve ringing for far longer than an ordinary peal, up to 17 hours. The difficulties of ringing ordinary peals are magnified in these performances, as are the difficulties of composing them. One challenge to ringers is to ring 'the extent', which on eight bells is 40,320 changes. The last time this was rung on tower bells, it took 18 hours.

"Raising in peal" does not refer to ringing a peal, but is the process where a band of ringers increases the swing of tower bells from mouth down to mouth upwards while keeping them ringing in rounds. The opposite process is "lowering in peal", where the swing of the bells is gradually reduced until they are at rest mouth downwards, again keeping the bells ringing in rounds throughout.

Quarter peals are also commonly rung, and are popular for service ringing, where a full peal would be time consuming. These generally meet most of the rules for a peal, but need be only a quarter the length (i. e. at least 1,260 or 1,250 changes, depending on the number of bells).

Many notable peals are also recorded on peal boards attached to the walls of the ringing rooms in the towers where they took place, and in the peal books of local change ringing associations. The Felstead database is an on line searchable resource for all peal records.