Tintinnalogia or the Art of Ringing

The third chapter of Ronald Blythe's Akenfield is devoted to bell ringing. It is an account by Robert Palgrave, a fifty-five-year-old bellringer in mid-twentieth-century Suffolk County, England. You can read the first half of it here (from the Thing Finder blog). To get the rest I would advise reading it in Akenfield itself, where it lies among many, many gems of oral Suffolk County history. This chapter, called "The Ringing Men . . ." is one of the most stimulating pieces of writing I have ever read. Through reading it I came upon Fabian Stedman's treatise 1617 treatise Tintinnalogia or thee Art of Ringing, which you can read here.

And you can find more about Suffolk church bells here.