A Peal Is the Sum of Many Changes

In change ringing, the aim is to play a church’s set of bells in a different order each time, until all the possibilities are exhausted.

In each change, a bell may move only one place in the order. For instance, the No. 1 bell in the first change could be No. 2 in the next change, but not No. 3.

On a set of five bells, there are 120 combinations in a “peal”--all of a bell set’s possible permutations. With six bells it rises to 720, and with seven to 5,040.

Beyond that, it becomes impractical to ring all possible changes. On a set of 12 bells, for example, it would take about 40 years to ring the 479,001,600 changes.

Therefore, for churches with many bells, a sequence of 5,000 or more changes is considered a peal. Most take around three hours to ring.

In 1668, Fabian Stedman published the first comprehensive book on change ringing, setting out methods for exhausting all the possible ringing orders for a set of bells. His patterns, with names like “Stedman Cinques” and “Stedman Caters,” are still used today.