Tony Ayres learned to ring at Winchester College in the early eighties, but the pressure of work forced him to stop in the late 1980s, by which stage he was, he was also ringing at North Stoneham and occasionally at St. John's in Alresford. He started ringing again in 2013 at St. John's Tony's main ringing-related accomplishment is that he discovered some 200 previously unrecognised doubles place methods in the 1980s. Whilst some of them were known about everybody had said that the doubles place methods could only be run to two forties and not to extents. The college band rang and named the first a hundred and twenties of them. And then they left the field for others to mop up. It was slightly surprising to find that one could in the late 20th century still discover new doubles methods. But of course, personal computers were in their infancy and we hadn't yet reached the stage of finding everything by computer sledgehammer techniques.
Tony maintains that he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
This entry was transcribed from the podcast episode which was aired in March 2021.
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