Appendix 2: Annual Reports Investigation

Introduction

The function of this part of the Trends Working Party’s work was to investigate the health of Church Bellringing through an examination of the annual reports of Bell-ringing Guilds and Associations. In particular there was an interest in attempting to determine whether there was a decline in the participation in the Exercise by younger ringers. This report also includes information on the general trend in total numbers of ringers and also attempts to ascertain whether there is any improvement in the service provided by ringers across towers in the areas of various Guilds and Associations.

Methods

In order to make the study meaningful it was decided to examine annual reports over the years 1974 to 1999 and to make it possible over the time available the reports were examined at 5-year intervals. After consultation with a statistician it was concluded that at least 15% of the Associations would need to be examined over as wide an area as possible. The report covers only England and includes about 36% of the English territorial associations for the general investigation and 24% for the young peoples’ study. In the latter case, this was because not all Guilds and Associations include numbers of young ringers among the statistics provided. The numbers of young ringers were either taken directly from the statistics in the report (which usually referred to members under 17 years, sometimes younger) or calculated from financial statements when young ringers paid a lower annual subscription below a given age, again usually 17.

In general, the total number of members is given in reports and sometimes the total number of towers is also given. However, in some cases this number refers only to ringable towers. Also, where total numbers are not given and counting has to be resorted to, the towers which are ringable are sometimes the only ones given and sometimes not. The numbers used are for members of that Guild or Association and do not take into account double counting between neighbouring Guilds and Associations or occasional double counting between towers. No attempt has been made to include non-resident life members or associate members unless these are included within the total numbers appearing in the report. If this applies it is only likely to include associate members. Experience suggests that although there will be discrepancies between the various Guilds and Associations, the errors are not likely to be great enough to distort the results sufficiently to change conclusions pointing to general trends over the last 25 years.

The Annual Reports for the following Guilds and Associations were examined:

Ely*

Bath and Wells

Chester

Derby*

Gloucester and Bristol*

Guildford*

Herefordshire

Kent*

Lancashire

Oxford

Southwell*

Sussex*

Winchester and Portsmouth*

Worcester*

Yorkshire*

* indicates that data for younger ringers were available.

Results

Fig. 1 shows plots of numbers of members of ringing societies plotted against the year.

Fig. 1: Total Number of Members

It can be seen that membership has increased in almost all the societies investigated from 1975 to 1999, there tend to be large fluctuations for organisations with small numbers of members. It seems to be a reasonable assumption that these trends reflect a general increase in the total number of ringers in the sample examined over this period. If the data are looked at on a tower-by-tower basis for towers which appear to have no ringing members recorded in that annual report, we see the situation shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: Percentage of Towers Without Members

It will be seen that for almost all the Guilds and Associations looked at there is a quite consistent downward trend from 1975 to 1979. This implies that towers formerly without members have significant beneficiaries of the increase in the number of ringing members.

The percentages of junior members in 10 societies are plotted in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3: Percentage of Junior Members

It will be seen that for the majority of societies there is a fairly consistent decrease in junior members as a percentage of all members from 1974 to 1999. Although there is not such a strong correlation, the absolute numbers of junior members has also shown a decline. If, as appears likely this reflects the trend in the numbers of younger ringers (as opposed to members) then as the numbers of adult members has increased, while the numbers of junior ringers has declined. This appears to be in keeping with the experience generally of ringers.

Data have also been collected (but are not shown here) for numbers of strong towers (between 4 and 10 ringing members) and very strong towers (10 or more ringing members).

It is clear that if numbers of ringing members are indicators, tower bell ringing has had a very healthy period of growth over the last 25 years. The equally consistent decline in the percentage of younger ringers and the decrease in the absolute numbers of junior members in most of the territorial societies examined suggests that the bulk of the growth can attributed to the recruitment of older ringers at the expense of younger ringers.

An optimistic feature of the figures is the decrease in the number of towers without any ringing members. Also, coupled with this the qualitative observation, from most of the annual reports examined, that there is a very significant decline in the numbers of unringable towers and of course an increase in augmentations and installations.