Shortly before Easter I popped my head out of the front door in East Hill Street and sniffed the evening air. The wind was coming in from the East and I realised I could hear the ringers at Gill practising on their new peal of bells. I know that bells aren't everyone's cup of tea but I like them and it was pleasant to hear the sound drifting in on the wind. Bells have always fascinated me both as useful artefacts and from the engineering point of view. They vary in size from small hand bells to monsters like the Tsar Kolokol Bell in Red Square, cast in 1733/35 and weighing 200 tons. (It cracked during casting and was never rung but survives to this day.)
Let's start at the beginning. We have evidence of the Chinese using bells over 3,000 years ago. The name 'bell' comes from old Saxon: 'bellan', to bawl or bellow and in its earliest uses was exactly that, an artefact that could make a loud sound and attract attention. They have had many uses in music, as an alarm call in case of danger, as an indication of time, or as a call to work or prayer.
The bell as an alarm survived until relatively recent times. In WW2 all church bells were silenced and were only to be rung in the event of an invasion. This rule was broken only once when Winston Churchill authorised the bells to be rung to celebrate victory at El Alamein in the North African campaign. Warning bells survived on fire engines, police cars and ambulances until the advent of modern sirens. In the days before domestic clocks and watches became common many large farms and the early factories had bells which summoned workers to their tasks or marked the ending of the day. Butts and Clough mills in Barlick both had bells mounted above the offices. In even earlier days when churches were Roman Catholic, the ringing of church bells to mark the intervals of the religious day served as a useful indicator of time to people working in the fields. The incorporation of chimes into large public clocks gave us useful reminders of the passing of the day like the Westminster Chimes of the clock on the Houses of Parliament. (It's the bell that's called Big Ben, not the clock.)
The most common use of bells, or rather 'peals' of bells, is in campanology which is the art of ringing bells in a set pattern, the most usual one is called 'change ringing'. This is the sound we will hear from Gill when the new ringers get fully up to speed. This where English bell ringing departs from most other countries in the use of bells, we never descended to the Continental Carillon ringing but invented our own unique use for the bells. As far as I can make out this started after the publication of 'Tintinnalogia or the Art of Ringing' by Richard Duckworth and Stedman in 1668, closely followed by 'Campanalogia' by Fabian Stedman in 1677. Today change ringing remains most popular in England but is practised worldwide; over four thousand peals are rung each year.
Bells have been cast in Britain from the fifth century and in the early days when transport was very difficult were often cast near the church. Furnaces and casting pits were made specially for that bell. I have come across a similar practice in the history of early cast cannon, in many cases they were made on the battlefield, particularly when large siege guns or mortars were needed. The Venerable Bede recounts the casting and use of bells in 670AD and by the late tenth century we have records of multiple bells in peals being used.
As more bells were cast methods were refined and eventually bell-founding became so specialised that some foundries did nothing else. Skills and methods were improved. The building of the large moulds in pits on the foundry floor was perfected and a mixture of 80% Copper and 20% tin became the standard Bell Metal. The shape of the bells was refined as the founders gained more understanding of what made a perfectly tuned bell with a good tone. The thickness of the wall of the bell at certain points was just as important as the final tuning of the bell by shaping the inside of the throat of the bell using a large lathe. There are still two specialised bell foundries in England, one at Whitechapel in London and one in Loughborough.
Hanging the bells in the frame in the tower was a specialised job and here again English practice varied from the continent because the bells swung and the clappers were loose. Many continental bells are struck by controlling the clapper hitting a stationary bell, this how bells connected to clocks are struck. This method of swinging the bells gave the masons and architects problems as well. There are cases on record of the swinging weight of the bells damaging the church towers.
Bells were often given an identity and messages cast onto the exterior surfaces, many of which seemed to be intended to be what the bell itself was saying when it was rung. I have often thought that in this respect there is a connection between our bells and the Tibetan Prayer Wheels which are thought to convey the prayer written on them by the simple act of spinning them, automated praying if you like! I like this concept and once saw a bell with 'De profundis clamavi ad te domine' cast on the sound bow. “Out of the depths I cry unto thee oh lord”, psalm 130. Sounds good to me!
Bells also crop up in literature, remember Quasimodo and the bells? There are many legends of ghostly bells, particularly those on churches lost to the sea by coastal erosion. Folk myths persist that on stormy nights the bells can be heard ringing wildly under the waves. Look up Richard Southey's poem about the warning bell the Abbott of Arbroath placed on the Inchcape Rock. 'Ralph the Rover' cut it off out of spite and then was himself wrecked on the reef because there was no warning.
With the new peal at Gill, Barlick becomes part of the bell-ringing fraternity and it may well be that it generates its own traditions in years to come. In a world increasingly governed by economics and cost-efficiency there is something wonderfully eccentric about spending money on what some would see as a totally unproductive scheme. I'm with the bell ringers! Let's hear it for a bit of eccentricity!
There was a turret for the bell on the offices at Butts Mill.
