Albert J. Pitman

Albert John Pitman is regarded by change ringing campanologists as a remarkable and versatile composer of peals in bell ringing methods. Described as ‘perhaps the greatest of all time’ in the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers biography of him, An Unassuming Genius, he was an extraordinary talent in the field of peal composition. Life Born in Bridgend, Glamorgan in 1887, two years later he moved with his family some twenty miles west, to Baglan, Neath Port Talbot. He had very little education, leaving school at the age of twelve, but his teacher told him ‘there’s nothing more I can teach you.’ This was perhaps an early sign of an unusual talent. In 1903 at the age of sixteen he joined the Great Western Railway Company and worked for them until his compulsory retirement at sixty-five. He learned to ring bells the year he left school, probably from his father, who was a member of the bell-ringing band at St Catharine’s Church, Baglan. Only eleven years later, in 1910, he rang and conducted his own peal, of 5040 Grandsire Triples at St Mary’s Church, Aberavon, ‘a highly unusual step for a ‘first-timer.’ Later, his daughter Dolly, who, with her siblings, inherited his mathematical