Entrance to St. David's belltower - it's much bigger than it looks It was going to be a cracker of a frost. It was already freezing when I met with the Hobart Bellringers outside St. David’s Cathedral last night. Then we made our way up into the tower. While the present Cathedral (begun 1872 with the belltower completed in 1931) has always been an imposing Hobart landmark, I had never really appreciated how enormous it was until I began climbing those narrow spiral stairs. Tonight I was being initiated into the arcane world of bell ringing or more precisely, change ringing which Wiki defines as “ The art of ringing a set of tuned bells in a controlled manner.” While many countries have wonderful church bells, this particular branch of campanology is largely confined to the Anglophone world. Initially Christian missionaries used hand bells to call the faithful to church, but by the 550’s church bells were installed in many parishes. By the C7th a number o...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people