A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Hand Bells

HAND BELLS for purposes of tune-playing or practising Change-Ringing can be obtained of all bell founders, tuned either chromatically or simply in the diatonic scale.

There are many bands of tune-players on hand bells in England, consisting of five or six men, who manipulate between them as many as sixty bells, and produce extremely pretty music. Hand bells are also used by Change-Ringers for practising the methods by which changes are produced, before performing them on the tower bells, much noise and annoyance being thus prevented; they are almost indispensable for this purpose.

[ C. A. W. T. ]