For the Mavis Whitehead Trophy - 17th October 2026
Hosting the South East 12 Bell Compeition is a great opportunity to showcase your church as a venue for ringing events (including as a potential future National 12 Bell Qualifier or Final location), but it is also an opportunity to raise funds.
This document is a useful guide to what is required from a host venue and provides some insight into the amount of attendees and what you may expect to be able to raise if you choose to provide catering or other services on the day.
The region is pretty active, and the first year had 7 teams (with at least one that gave apologies due to a date clash). We notionally cap the competition at 10 teams currently, and I would envisage at least 8 regularly taking part.
The committee, have currently chosen to hold the draw at 1030, with the ringing slots (each 30mins) starting at 11, to facilitate a slightly earlier finish in the case where there maybe an evensong at the venue. The judges usually need an hour / hour and half to deliberate after the final team rings.
Below is the indicative schedule for the day:
The welcome and draw will take place.
Team 1 - 1100 - 1130
Team 2 - 1130 - 1200
Team 3 - 1200 - 1230
Team 4 - 1230 - 1300
Team 5 - 1300 - 1330
Team 6 - 1330 - 1400
Team 7 - 1400 - 1430
Team 8 - 1430 - 1500
Team 9 - 1500 - 1530
Team 10 - 1530 - 1600
Start time is dependent on the length of time required for deliberation.
Judges will need to be located so that they will not be disturbed by either attendees of the event or significant other sound disturbances, so that they can concentrate on listening to the ringing.
The competition should be judged using a live sound feed of the bells, assisted by a Hawkear analysis which is generated from the same sound feed (see Hawkear section for details on the technical setup required).
There will normally be 2 judges and possibly 1 Strikeometrist. The Strikeometrist may need access for setup either the night before or the morning of the contest.
The judges will be annotating marksheets during the ringing, and the Strikeometer technician will be operating from a laptop computer, so enough chairs and tabletop space for the teams to carry out these tasks comfortably would be great. The judges will have a live Strikeometer sound feed and would ideally be location somewhere where the natural sound of the bells will not interfere with that.
During the day you should provide refreshments (food and drink), as well as lunch (usually something simple like sandwiches, crisps, etc. as they will not have time to eat anything more substantial). If any money is spent on this, it will be reimbursed by the Competition.
To aid the judges, we prefer that host towers have a Hawkear feed in place. This consists of a microphone, situated in the belfry, to record the bells, and then either a wired or wireless connection to the pre-amp / laptop with Hawkear installed.
The committee will coordinate with the tower prior to the event to identify what setup (if any) is already in place and to discuss what is needed to ensure the feed will be able to reach the location where the judges will be situated.
If required, the committee can arrange for Hawkear equipment to be installed for the event and removed afterwards.
Ideally the host tower would provide the following stewards. These do not need to be the same people throughout the whole day.
The Team steward(s) should meet the next team at the entry point to the tower 15 minutes before their allotted start time. As soon as the ringing team comes into rounds (or at a time deemed appropriate) the next team should be taken into the ringing room and the previous team encouraged to leave.
The aim is to keep things running smoothly and on time.
A steward is required to look after the judges for the day. This is primarily to ensure they are kept fed and watered and ensure they know here the toilets are etc. In the event that the judges have a problem, this steward will need to make contact with a member of the organising committee. The easiest way to achieve this is via phone messaging.
The judges may appreciate being able to spend a few minutes listening to the bells from the ringing room on the day, so that they know how the bells sound to the ringers. This test ring usually takes place approximately 15 minutes before the draw. It is ideal if those taking part in the test ringing are not competing in the contest. If you cannot muster your own band, the Contest Chair (or their delegate) can help round up ringers who are not competing to ring with the judges. Only a few rounds and basic changes are needed.
The Contest Chair will lead the process of the draw and the results, but you may wish to also have a local representative do a formal welcome (often the local Vicar, for example) and give instructions about the venue (the local organiser). The Chair will provide a running order for this, which will include the opportunity for this.
The Chair will have all the team names on bits of paper for the draw. The host team will be provided with a pro forma for both the draw and the results which will need copying onto a flipchart or slide.
If possible, please would you provide the following at the draw and results:
The host tower may wish to use the event to raise some local funds by catering breakfast, lunch and perhaps a bar and this is highly encouraged. As a minimum, we ask for tea coffee, water, squash and biscuits to be available throughout the day. But previous venues have also sometimes provided hot breakfast options, a full range of soft and alcoholic drinks and lunch options. This is by no means expected, but does allow you to maximise your opporunity to fund raise.
Although sales are obviously not guaranteed, below are the sales of various items made at Portsmouth Cathedral in 2025, when 7 teams were involved. They took in excess ~£750 on food and drink.
Breakfasts
Lunches
Snacks
Drinks
In addition to the above, a large amount of teas & coffees were also sold.