Editing Change ringing (section)

===Organisation and extent===
The [[Central Council of Church Bell Ringers]], founded in 1891, is dedicated to representing change ringers around the world. Most regional and local ringing guilds are affiliated with the council. Its journal, ''[[The Ringing World]]'',<ref>{{official website|www.ringingworld.co.uk|The Ringing World}}</ref> has been published weekly since 1911; in addition to news and features relating to bellringing and the bellringing community, it publishes records of achievements such as peals and quarter-peals. Ringers generally adhere to the Council's rules and definitions governing change ringing.

The Central Council, by means of its peal records, also keeps track of record length peals, both on tower bells and handbells. (The record for tower bells remains the 1963 Loughborough extent of Plain Bob Major [40,320 changes]; for handbells it was set in 2007 in Willingham, Cambridgeshire, with 72,000 changes of 100 different Treble Dodging Minor methods, taking just over 24 hours to ring<ref>{{cite web | url = http://peals.co.uk/pealdetails.asp?serno=H2007/0211 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151016214719/http://peals.co.uk/pealdetails.asp?serno=H2007%2F0211 | url-status = dead | archive-date = 2015-10-16 | publisher = [[The Ringing World]] | work = peals.co.uk | title = 72000 Treble Dodging Minor (100m) | access-date = 2020-07-17 }}</ref>) More importantly, perhaps, along with keeping track of the first peal ever rung in a method, the Central Council controls the naming of new methods: it generally allows the first band to ring a method to name it.

Much ringing is carried out by bands of ringers meeting at their local tower to ring its bells. For the sake of variety, though, many ringers like to take occasional trips to make a ''tower grab'' ringing the bells of a less familiar tower. The setting, the church architecture, the chance to ring more bells than usual, the bells' unique tone, their ease or difficulty of ringing, and sometimes even the unusual means of accessing the ringing chamber can all be part of the attraction. The traditional means of finding bell towers, and still the most popular way today, is the book (and now internet database) ''[[Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers]]''.

{{as of|2018|June|30}} there are 7,141 English style rings in ringable condition.  The Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, India, and Spain have one each.  The Windward Isles and the Isle of Man have 2 each.  Canada and New Zealand 8 each.  The Channel Isles 11.  Africa as a continent has 13.  Scotland 23, Ireland 38, USA 48, Australia 61 and Wales 227.  The remaining 6,695 (94%) are in England (including three mobile rings).  World-wide there are 985 unringable rings, 930 in England, 55 in Wales and 12 elsewhere.<ref>{{Citation | title = County Lists from Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers | publisher = Central Council of Church Bell Ringers | url = http://dove.cccbr.org.uk/home.php | access-date = 20 July 2018 | archive-date = 10 October 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161010225541/http://dove.cccbr.org.uk/home.php | url-status = dead }}</ref>