[1] It acts as a co-ordinating body for education, publicity and codifying change ringing rules, also for advice on maintaining and restoring full-circle bells.
The Central Council also publishes the bell ringers' weekly journal The Ringing World.
However, the need to have a national body with general oversight was increasingly debated, and discussions took place in 1883 about forming one.
[2] Heywood contrived in 1890 to organise a dinner in Birmingham for the 80th birthday of the noted ringer Henry Johnson, to which representatives of ringing associations from around the country were invited to attend as a "national gathering".
[2] Heywood's ideas of the aims of the prospective Council were: At the exploratory gathering in 1890 there was strong support for the concept of a central advisory and coordinating body, and the first formal meeting of the new Council took place the following year on Easter Tuesday, 28 March 1891, at the Inns of Court Hotel, London.
The Council meets annually in September where major policy decisions are discussed and the reports of the many committees are received.
[4] The Central Council Library is an important collection of books on bell ringing and campanology.
Heywood died in 1916, and left his ringing books to the Cambridge University Guild which decided to donate them as the basis of a library for the Central Council in 1920.
Bernard Tyrwhitt-Drake of Walsoken, then by Wilfrid J. Hooton, and in 1953, Frederick Sharpe, a writer on historical aspects of bells and ringing.
Its founder and first editor was John Sparkes Goldsmith, who was born at Southover, Lewes, on 13 January 1878 and died on 1 June 1942.
[14] In 2011, celebrations of the 100 year anniversary of the magazine were held nationally, with open ringing round London churches, and a service at Westminster Abbey.