St George, Poynton, Cheshire
A classic Taylor peal from 1887. […]
Author: Bill Hibbert
Posts by Bill Hibbert
Bell recordings collection
This page gives statistics by founder and date of my collection of bell recordings. […]
The tuning of Westminster Abbey tenor
Detailed records taken when the tenor of Westminster Abbey was tuned in 1971 show the impossibility of independent tuning of upper partials. […]
Tonal analysis from recordings
How to do a tonal analysis of a bell from a recording of it. […]
Merthyr Tydfil bells
Visited: Bill Hibbert 31 August 2002 This is a historically very important ring from the Taylor bellfoundry. The tower website used to say: “The bells were cast by John Taylor, Loughborough in 1893, and were only the second ring (after Norton, Sheffield) to be tuned by the ‘Simpson Principle’.” In fact the bells were cast in […]
A Bochumer Verein steel bell in the UK
In the Peace Gardens in the middle of Sheffield, across from the town hall, hangs a steel bell cast in 1955 by Bochumer Verein, presented to the people of Sheffield in 1986. Those who have read the description of German steel bells will not be surprised to know that the bell is broadly true-harmonic. To […]
The largest steel bell in the UK
The largest steel bell in the UK, cast by Naylor-Vickers of Sheffield in 1862, is in St Peter’s Italian Church, Holborn, London. Dickon Love and I visited it on 27 September 2002. This bell is sometimes know as The Steel Monster of Clerkenwell! The bell was exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. The exhibition […]
Coventry Cathedral – old ten
Sound re-created: WAH 8/5/04 Prior to the casting and installation of the current peal of twelve (originally a chime of 14), Coventry had a peal of ten which were by reputation one of the finest tens of their age – they were originally cast by Pack and Chapman in 1774 (though the 6th was recast […]
The strike note of bells
This article was first published in ‘The Ringing World’ of June 20, 2003, page 586. What determines the pitch of a bell – the note we assign it – has been one of the continuing puzzles of campanology. It was Lord Rayleigh in 1890 who first established scientifically that the pitch of a bell was about an […]
The various ways bells are used
There are various ways that church bells can be used, and this can affect the way they are tuned. The three ways considered in this section of the paper are: sounding singly playing as part of a carillon ringing in changes English style. The last is of most interest, but the first two are briefly […]