Roaring Chorus will spread across the world

Ferns being placed on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior at a previous Armistice Day ceremony at the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The eight bells of St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral will ring out across the Waikato River on Sunday to Memorial Park as part of the nation wide Armistice Day centenary Roaring Chorus.

At the park, where Hamilton's Armistice Service is being held, choirs and bands will sing and play, while cars sounds their horns to replicate the sounds of celebration that erupted across the world signalling the end of World War I in 1918.

Across the city, churches and chapels will also ring and chime at 11:02am after a two-minute silence.

St Peter's Cathedral will be holding a Remembrance Service at 9.45am on Sunday which will include the Last Post and Reveille, while the bellringers are also participating in the 'Ringing Remembers' project after the service, to remember the 1400 bellringers who served in the armed services and lost their lives during World War I.

New Zealand's Roaring Chorus connects with a campaign led by the British government, supported by the German government, inviting nations to participate in international bellringing.

Other countries, including the United States, are contributing, and even the remote location of Rothera Research Station in the Antarctic is expected to join.
Churches across New Zealand will join in.

"New Zealand will be amongst the first countries in the world to commemorate the Armistice Centenary, and our bells will be echoed around the world as other nations contribute the sound of theirs," director of the First World War Centenary Programme WW100, Sarah Davies says.

"It will be poignantly beautiful."

The Rangimarie peace bell of the National War Memorial Carillon will toll 11 times to mark the start of the two-minute silence of remembrance at 11am at the official Armistice Centenary National Ceremony in Wellington.

At 11.02am, there will be a celebratory fanfare played by the full bells of the carillon, in unison with the Roaring Chorus.

Historic accounts show that there was spontaneous bellringing in celebration of peace at the time of the Armistice. For instance, a 1918 letter written by a Kinloch girl to her local newspaper says: "The steamer Ben Lomond began to whistle coming up the lake when the news of peace came through.

"Mum got the cowbell and I got the school bell, and we made a great noise with them," (Otago Witness, 27-11-1918).