Beltower was first conceived in 1993. The author had started bell ringing in about 1974, at St Mary's, Woodford, and by 1976 had managed a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles inside, but when he moved to Crewkerne, Somerset, his ringing lapsed. When he restarted after a 13 year gap, he wasted a long time, trying to get to grips with Grandsire Doubles. He even went on a day course only to have forgotten what he had learnt when he finally had the opportunity to ring it (a familiar tale), and it was this hurdle that led him to write Beltower. All he wanted was exercise of the work at Bobs and Singles, so he might get it right on practice night. Based on DOS, it had a black screen with a scrolling display of bell numbers, red and blue lines, beep tones, on screen method selection and pop-down menus. He soon added a randomised touch generator and realised that if he added help, other ringers might find Beltower useful as well.

Before he had released the DOS version, he had already begun work on the Windows version, initially as an exercise in visual programming, and by the Autumn of 1997, three and a half years of evenings, week-ends and holidays later, it was finally ready for release. Since then, many years of improvements have been added bit by bit to produce the current version.