The Taylor family had a profound influence on bellfounding worldwide through their rediscovery of true-harmonic bell design and tuning in the late 19th century. This section of the site brings together a history of the Taylor bellfounding family, written by Paul Taylor for a celebration dinner in 1960, and also an investigation I did into […]
Around 20 years ago, I rang on the peal of eight at St Edmund Southwold. All the bells had been tuned in 1990 by Whitechapel with accurate nominals, but to my ears the trebles sounded distinctly flat, by up to a quarter of a semitone. The two trebles at Southwold cast by Moore, Holmes & […]
In bells, the note we hear (for all bells that are not very small or very large) is a missing fundamental or virtual pitch effect. A set of higher frequency partials generates a sensation of pitch in our ears, auditory nerve or brain. This sensation of pitch is very strong and outweighs any sensation of […]
Sometimes, peals of bells are tuned with stretch, so that the nominals of the trebles are sharper than the musical scale would require by a quarter or a third of a semitone. Stretch tuning was common in peals of bells produced before the true-harmonic revolution in the late 1890s. Paul Taylor re-introduced the practice at […]
This church, with a 14th century tower and a nave of 1754, was burnt to the ground by vandals in 1977. The original peal of bells, a Dobson 6, were destroyed in the blaze. The church has been completely restored, and now has a unique peal of bells, comprising six steel bells originally hung at […]
This article, by John Wilton of the Liverpool Bell Restoration and Maintenance Group, was published in the Ringing World of February 24th, 1984 (no. 3800, pages 161 – 169). I am very grateful to John and the Ringing World for permission to reuse this article. It gives a striking account of what amateurs can achieve […]
In my article written last year on the acoustics of steel bells, I suggested that although it is often said that rust affects the tone of steel bells, in practice this seems not to be the case. I have observed that Bochumer steel bells of the 1950s and 1960s have true-harmonic partials when measured today, presumably little […]
This article was first published in The Ringing World, issue 5523, March 3 2017, page 196, and revised January 2023. In November 2015, I sang in a concert in the Gustav Adolphus Memorial Church in Nuremburg. During the concert, the 3.4 tonne steel tenor rang the curfew, a lovely and captivating sound. The experience inspired […]
Steel bells Bells are normally cast in an alloy of copper and tin. In the second half of the 19th century, almost 1,000 cast steel bells were produced by Naylor Vickers in Sheffield. These bells have a reputation for poor sound. But in Germany, Bochumer Verein cast huge quantities of steel bells, and from the […]
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The science and history of bell sounds This is the text of a talk given to the Central Council of Church Bellringers on September 8th, 2019. Introduction This talk is a journey through 1000 years of bellfounding, with many examples of bell sounds that show how bells have changed over the millennium. I will demonstrate […]