Wayne Koskela, Susan Hague, Peter Spiller, Fiona Stanners, Anne Spiller, and Glenda Scott make up some of the current bell ringing team.
“You need to walk into the tower and have a feeling that you are walking into magic.”
That, says Susan Hague is how you will know if you are a bell ringer.
The Cambridge bell ringing coach should know – she has been ringing church bells since the 1970s, when a choir-friend led her upstairs to show her the ropes.
Now she is chiming in to join the call for new bell ringers.
But it comes with her warning… “bell ringers never retire – they die”. Once you’re a bell ringer, you’re a bell ringer for life.
St Andrew’s Anglican church has a rotating group of bell ringers, who gather weekly to practice the 300 year old tradition and ring the bells every Sunday.
And it wants more – the church has put the call out for more bell ringers – formally known as campanologists.
The current bell ringing team say they love the sound, the tradition, and making their families proud – bell ringer Wayne Koskela says it reminds him of his youth, hearing the church bells peal across the meadows at sunset.
There are six cast steel bells at the church, each requiring one person to chime it.
Susan says new bell ringers don’t need extreme strength or musical ability to make the bells sing – but there is a bit of technique to it.
“We’re the only set, as far as we know, that uses what we call swing chime changing.”
Swing chime changing is when the bell is hung ‘down’, and ropes are used to chime it.
Cards in the St Andrew’s belfry explain the different chimes bell ringers will need to learn. The cards have been printed out and stuck on the wall, obscuring the painted numbers that have been in the belfry for up to 140 years.
The bells are unique in another way – they are cast steel, not bronze, like all other church bells in New Zealand.
The cast steel bells are not the church’s original bells – a first set was installed in 1882, lasting only two years before one bell fell from its cradle and injured two bell ringers.
These bells were hung upright, and like all other bells in New Zealand, swung in a full-circle motion to produce a ripple of sound.
They were replaced in 1884.
It was only the third church in New Zealand to have a set of bells, one year after Christchurch Cathedral.
Aside from regular church services on Sundays, the bells can be heard for royal visits, fundraising efforts, celebrations, and weddings by request.
- Archer Miller is a Wintec journalism student.
