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Notes on method collections

Important Notice

These method collections are the copyright of Anthony P. Smith. You are welcome to make copies of the material for your own use. You may distribute copies to others provided that you do not do so for profit and provided that you include this copyright statement. If you modify the material before distributing it, you must include a clear notice that the material has been modified.

These collections contain rung methods for all stages from Minimus upwards. They also contain other methods from the following earlier collections.

• Collection of Plain Major and Cater Methods, 1926
• Collection of Triples Methods, 2nd edition, 1935
• Collection of Plain Major Methods, 2nd edition, 1952

Each method entry consists of the name, place notation, lead head produced, summary tenors together falseness, date and place of the first peal and references.

The terms "Imperial", "College" or "Court" have been retained as part of the names of plain methods which appeared in the 1926 collection and also distinguish between methods on different stages, not related as in the Central Council Decision on Method Extension, which would otherwise have the same name.

Twin-hunt methods are grouped according to the symmetry of their place notations. This symmetry is indicated by (a), (b) or (c) in the table headings, where (a) means symmetric like Grandsire, (b) means symmetric like Plain Bob and (c) means asymmetric.

For palindromic single-hunt and twin-hunt (b) methods the place notation is given up to and including the half lead place, followed by the lead end place. For twin-hunt (a) methods the place notation is given up to and including the places made while the hunt bells cross behind. For twin-hunt (c) and non-palindromic methods the entire place notation is given.

For methods with Plain Bob lead heads, the lead head produced is given by a code from the following tables. Lead heads for single-hunt methods are in the top left and bottom right hand sections, codes a - f and p - q are for seconds place lead ends and codes g - m and r - s for lead ends with no internal places. Lead heads for twin-hunt methods are in the top right and bottom left hand sections. For methods with non-Plain Bob lead heads the actual lead head is given.

The following symbols are used for bell numbers above twelve. Note that the letter E is already in use for eleven and that the letter I is not used because of its potential confusion with the number one.

The letter(s) in the column headed fch give details of the internal falseness, with the tenors together, of that method. The notation is that used by Roger Baldwin in his classification of the 120 false course-heads, slightly extended for Royal and Maximus methods. In this classification, the groups of false course-heads, tenors together members only, are:

In-course false course-heads are shown in each case above the line, while the out-of-course false course heads appear below the line. The groups designated by small letters contain only out-of-course false course-heads.

In Major, the groups including both in-course and out-of-course false course-heads, and which are designated by capital letters, always occur as complete groups. Their presence is indicated in the tables by a single occurrence of the corresponding letter. In Royal and Maximus, the in-course and out-of-course components may occur separately, and for these categories of methods, the in-course and out-of course false course-head groups are shown separated by a slash. For example, the presence of letter E before a slash would indicate the false course-heads 32465 and 43265; while after a slash, would indicate the false course-heads 24635 and 25364. If both sets of false course-heads were present, E would be included twice.

A further consideration in Royal and Maximus is that certain of the groups defined above, K, L, N, P, U and a can subdivide. The subdivisions, indicated by K1, K2, L1, L2, N1, N2, P1, P2, U1, U2, a1 and a2 are also shown above.

As an example, Ibstock Surprise Royal fch is given as L1/BDK1c. The false course-heads associated with Ibstock are accordingly:

Following the accepted convention, methods having no in-course false course-heads have been designated as cps ("clear proof scale"), although these methods will usually have out-of-course false course-heads.

The 24 groups of false course-heads with tenors together also contain tenors parted members. The 3 additional groups of false course-heads with no tenors together members are:

The notation is due to Edmund Shuttleworth, simplified by John Leary. When assessing the suitability of a composition with tenors together courses only, the presence of any of X, Y, Z against the method may be ignored. However if a composition has tenors parted courses, the presence of any of these additional groups must be considered. Note that the groups of false course-heads containing only out-of-course tenors together members (a - f) must be taken into account, even if the composition uses Bobs only, because these groups contain in-course tenors parted members.

Entries for plain methods which appeared in previous collections include a method number in a column headed CCC. The 360 Triples methods rung by the Manchester University Guild also show the code by which they were published.

So far as possible method entries include a Ringing World reference of the form year/page or, for the years 1911 to 1916, volume/page preceded by the letter V.

Anthony P.Smith, 72 Buriton Road, Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 6JE
Telephone: Winchester (01962) 881202. e-mail: smith_a_p@btinternet.com