Modern Peal Standards
Method Ringing peals today usually consist of between 5000-5280 changes, or permutations. On seven or more bells they must be rung without repetition of any of the changes. Most peals are composed and rung in compliance with the decisions of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, allowing them to be recorded in that organisation’s peal records. Many 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.
Peals can take anywhere from one and a half to over four hours to ring, depending on the weight of the bells, and whether handbells or tower bells are being rung. They are considered to be both a physical and a mental challenge, in that concentration has to be maintained for a long period of time, and each individual ringer has to ring their bell without a break.
Composition of peals is a specialized and highly complicated area of change ringing, as it involves having to constantly ensure throughout the process that no changes are repeated, while aiming to achieve the correct length.
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 40320 changes. The last time this was rung on tower bells, it took 18 hours.
In addition to ordinary peals, ringers often ring quarter-peals, which are a quarter of the length of a full peal, making them far easier to ring. Most quarter-peals take around 45 minutes to complete.
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