They’re well-known locally as a jolly lovely bunch of people, the bell-ringers of St Crewenna’s Church in Crowan.

The church’s eight bells go back around 300 years. Although their core group of bell-ringers range more modestly in age, they’ve had some members continuing into their 80s.

“It’s something you can carry on doing when you’re quite elderly,” said Liz. There are evident health benefits, both physical and mental.

“You’re totally focused on what you’re doing, totally in the zone,” she added. “It’s like a form of mindfulness.”

Their youngest member is Henry who, when not ringing bells, studies maths at Oxford University.

He’s also in a bell-ringing group – or ‘tower’ they call it – at Oxford. He observes that about half those student bellringers are fellow mathematicians.

“That doesn’t mean you have to like maths to enjoy the bell-ringing,” he points out. “But there’s extra enjoyment there if you like the mathematical patterns.”

Those bell-ringing sequences can be extraordinarily complex, but for the ringers of Crowan it’s not just about their technical expertise.

A couple of years ago, Henry had seen a notice in his local post office saying they were looking for new bell-ringers. 

“I’d no idea what it involved but I thought I’d give it a go,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t have continued with it if everyone hadn’t been so lovely when I started.”

“The most important thing is the friendship,” added his fellow ringer Duncan. “As a team, we take the ringing seriously, but a key element is the social aspect of it. 

“Don’t get the idea we don’t take the bell-ringing seriously. But getting it right all the time isn’t the only reason why we do it. 

“I think we make quite a good job of it because we get on so well together.”

Jane notes that the group is quite diverse in terms of age, experience and background. She says that, as a relative newcomer to the area, it’s been a great pleasure for her to join the group.

“We get people coming along to give it a go,” added Duncan. “We don’t criticise or pressurise people. That’s why people think we’re a friendly tower.”

The group have their stories about experiences of rather stricter towers. Howard recalls a visit to another tower a few years ago and the reaction of the bellringing captain there to their initial efforts.

“We started ringing and this look of horror descended on his face,” he said. “After we’d been ringing for five or ten minutes, he told us to stop and dismissed us from the tower.”

Crowan’s own captain, Amanda, remembers how, when she’d started bell-ringing in her younger days, the captain had instructed them never to stand on their tiptoes to ring. 

“If you did, then you were out!” she laughed. Several of the team have been taught ringing by Amanda. She is, they say, the glue that holds them together.

“They’re very good – good as gold,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better team.”

Their vicar, the Reverend Rosheen Browning, recalls Amanda once telling her that when she hears the bells she knows that all is right with the world.

“That’s now what I think myself, as I’m coming to the church for worship,” Rosheen said.

That’s a sentiment with which Steve agrees. He’s been ringing the bells at Crowan for more than 20 years, and is as such this particular church’s most stalwart ringer.

“The reason I do it is to keep the Crowan bells ringing,” he said. “I simply do it for that.”