The MIT Guild of Bellringers rings handbells at MIT on the second floor under the Building 7 rotunda (by the elevator) starting at about 6pm each Monday. The Guild helps with maintaining and ringing the tower bells of the Old North Church in Boston. There is also another Guild connected with ringing at the Church of the Advent in the Beacon Hill area of Boston.
Change ringing is a style of bell ringing developed for large church bells in Britain several hundred years ago. It does not involve ringing a melody on the bells, but rather permuting the order of sounding the bells according to formal rules called methods. You don't need any musical skill or experience to learn change ringing. If you enjoy working with numerical patterns, chances are this will be an enjoyable activity for you! We are always looking for new ringers and would be glad to teach you to ring on handbells or tower bells (or both!).
If you are interested in learning handbell ringing and/or tower bell ringing, or are just curious about what it looks and sounds like, or you want to pretend you're Paul Revere and need an excuse to get up the Old North Church steeple, we can arrange that as well. Either drop by on Monday between 6 and 9 pm or get in touch with us and we'll arrange a time for this.
For more information on the MIT guild please call Ken Olum or Cally Perry at (617) 784-6114, or send electronic mail to kdo@mit.edu (Ken Olum).
Last Modified: 2 December 1996
This page originally constructed by rey@mit.edu