Bellringers to create dazzling light show at Durham Cathedral
© Ian Forsyth/Getty ImagesLights inside the cathedral during a preview of the Lumiere festival
Thursday 16 November 2017 07.00 GMT

As darkness falls on Thursday evening, the bells of Durham Cathedral will ring out across the city - and continue for the next six hours while brilliant flashes light up sections of the enormous building, inside and out. The bellringers will literally be playing the cathedral, sensors on each bell directly triggering the flashes of light, with Cuthbert, the great 17th-century tenor bell, illuminating the central tower.

"It's never been done in the world before," the bell major Christopher Crabtree said. "We're excited - but it's going to be hard work."

It's also going to be hard work for any local residents who don't relish the sound of 6.5 tonnes of bronze sounding for six hours on each of the four nights of the Lumiere festival. "We are very grateful for the warmth and tolerance of our neighbours," the dean, Andrew Tremlett, said. There will be noisy nights in the deanery yards from the bell tower, but he is full of excitement about the project, which was partly devised in passionate discussions around his table.

Every year the festival brings huge crowds to see artists light the darkest corners of the city - not just the world heritage site of the cathedral and castle, but shopping centres and churchyards, gardens, the library, the railway viaduct and the facade of the Miners' Hall.

The festival, created by the arts trust Artichoke, has now spread to other cities and will return to London in January, but it began in Durham in 2009. "It's fair to say that in the beginning some people wondered what on earth we were at," its director Helen Marriage said. "Now it's an immense source of local pride - a lot of people went down to London and said it was good but not a patch on Durham."
Lights inside the cathedral during a preview of the Lumiere festival.

Bellringers to create dazzling light show at Durham Cathedral
© Owen HumphreyLights inside the cathedral during a preview of the Lumiere festival.
She is proudest of a survey which showed not just that the festival brings millions of pounds into Durham, but that 95% of those surveyed said it made them feel happier.

A small army including hundreds of volunteers has been working flat out to get everything ready. Much has to be done after dark to avoid bringing the commercial life of the city to a standstill. The walls of one entire site hut are covered with time sheets and maps, including one showing every street light in the city, indicating which need plastic cowls and which need to be turned off completely so the light spill does not ruin the installations.

The phone rings and the production manager Iain Bone, who has come from Scotland to work on every festival to date, learns with imperturbable calm that the wing mirror of an Argos lorry has taken out part of a lacy arch of fairy lights spanning one of the narrow streets off the market place, which an Italian team had spent a week rigging. "Right, fine. We'll sort it," he said.

This year at least 250,000 visitors are expected. In 2015 torrential rain and the river flooding barely affected the numbers - only a whale that was to swim through a cloud of mist had to be abandoned, because the rain had obliterated the mist.

By far the largest and most complex piece this year is Methods, the bells and lights at the cathedral. The whole event is an art installation by the Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena. When he came first and spotted a nondescript board with columns of numbers on the wall of the bell chamber, high in the cathedral tower - having passed with polite interest the tombs of saints, glories of stained glass and carved stone, and priceless ancient manuscripts - he knew he had found his pattern.

"The best pieces are deeply rooted in place," he said. "It is almost as if you don't have to think of them. They are just there waiting for you to do it."
A Lumiere festival rehearsal in Durham. Photograph: x
© Owen Humphreys/PAA Lumiere festival rehearsal in Durham.
He learned for the first time of the uniquely English tradition of change ringing, that the columns of numbers showed the order in which the cathedral's 10 bells must ring to make intricate patterns of sound. The piece will make the patterns visible. The bells will also be rung half-muffled, so each swing gives two sounds: the clear bright open side, which will trigger the lights on the facade, and the slightly eerie muffled one, often used for tolling funeral bells, driving the lights inside.

Bellringers are coming from all over the country to join the cathedral team, excited at ringing some completely new changes because the patterns have to look as well as sound marvellous. Firing, the joyful cacophony often used for weddings, is usually done by ringing all the bells simultaneously, but Crabtree says that would look too dull and so they are adding them in stages. The effect is a ribbon of light racing across the full length of the cathedral.

Crabtree joined the Durham ringers as soon as he arrived as a student and is now an associate professor in the school of science. As bell major he calls the bell numbers to be rung, so he expects to be on duty throughout all four nights - unless a phone call comes from his wife, who is normally one of the ringing team, but is imminently expecting their first child.

The entire six-hour performance - which Valbuena humbly hopes to be allowed to join in at some point - is seen as one composition. "The ringers are only human so there will be mistakes," he said, "and when that happens you will see the mistake written in light on the walls of the cathedral."

Lumiere Durham, 16-19 November, free but ticketed admission to the central area between the busiest hours of 16.30-19.30.