Eighteenth Century Birmingham Bell Ringers: A Genealogical Perspective

By the end of the eighteenth-century the St Martin’s Youths of Birmingham was one of the leading bell ringing societies outside London, as it remains to this day. The handwritten peal books in the Archive of the St Martin’s Guild, its modern successor, provide a record of the peals rung by the society from 1755, but little was known of the eighteenth-century ringers themselves beyond a few anecdotes contained in the oral history for a later period. Genealogical records and techniques allowed a fuller understanding of the lives of the ringers to be disclosed, informing a new narrative of the history of ringing in Birmingham and the place of the ringers in Birmingham at a significant period in the town’s history. The article shows how niche sources can be combined with genealogical and other sources to provide insights into the lives of members of an eighteenth-century society.