The dates of the founding of the Treble Bell (1936) for King George VI’s 1937 coronation, described in the 1936 inventory don’t seem to add up, but that’s what is apparently written!

Thus I don’t know why the final note in the 1936 inventory should refer to the “5th Tenor” as this bell is now clearly the 6th Tenor, founded in 1737, but I suppose it is quite likely that at this stage the tower had only 5 bells (as some towers still do) - shown in the inventory as 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th and that a Treble was added in 1936, such that the “5th Tenor” became the 6th Tenor.  The fact that bells 2-6 are all much older might support this theory.

It is also worth mentioning that for much of this time, the bell ropes would have descended to, and the bells been rung from, ground level rather than from up in the clock/ringing chamber.  There are closed-in holes in the floor of this clock/ringing chamber to show this and, as further evidence of the theory above, there are only five bell rope holes.

As to bell ringing, bells have been associated with church religious services from ancient times and in the early days performed many other functions, such as the announcement of church services, births, marriages and deaths.

Before the 17th Century (1600s) English churches would only have had three or four bells and these would have been chimed rather than pealed and it wasn’t until about 1650 that bells began to be mounted on large timber wheels with bell ropes passing round them, affording to ringers much more control of the chimes and leading to what is now called full circle ringing, with wheels and bells passing through 360^o during a ringing round.  I am aware of no evidence as to how ringing developed in St Michael’s but taking into account the age of the bells, it would be nice to conjecture that in the 16th Century (1500s) the current No. 3 was in place, perhaps with a couple of others now departed, but that these were simply chimed.  Then, over the next two centuries (1600s and 1700s) bells numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6 were added in that order and that during this time wheels and wheel ropes were installed to give, by 1737, a ring of 5 bells adapted for full circle and change ringing.  Finally, in 1936, a treble might have been added to give the ring of 6 bells, as at present.

We can guess that there will have been Astons or Aston Tirrold bands ringing these bells since the middle of the 18th century (about 1750).  More recently though, we don’t believe that there has been an Astons band ringing since the 1990s.