Taylors and Grimthorpe

[Bill Hibbert]

I was looking at some tuning figures today, as you do, and it 
occured to me to try to establish what effect Grimthorpe's ideas had 
on the acoustics of Taylor bells. I still have not re-read 
Grimthorpe's book to remind myself of his actual recommendations, 
but assumed for the investigation that I was looking for bells with 
a thicker profile or proportionally higher weight. 

The relative thickness or weight of bells has a reasonable 
correlation with octave nominal tuning (represented by the cents of 
the octave nominal relative to the nominal) with thick bells having 
flatter octave nominals. I restricted the investigation to the 
biggest bell in a set (because trebles are cast to a thicker scale 
in any case). I looked in my database of tuning figures for 
installations where the biggest bell is Taylors; in most cases these 
were complete peals, but there were some single bells (e.g. the 
Worcester bourdon, Great Bede etc.) and some instances where Taylors 
had replaced the tenor of a peal.

The list comprised 84 bells in all, and I have uploaded a chart of 
octave nominal tuning against casting date to the Yahoo files area 
as <http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/gKJXSUJEruw9VW6iebFWEI-
MbhBUjntm70KiBkKmVblU4TtWSbqMaGcmrQiGr_M89-L6Tbk89yi67CMWsSjNh5vo5jn-
RxbP/Taylor_tenors/taylor_tenors.gif>.

Looking at the chart, the following thoughts occur. In the earliest 
bells in the 1820s (just three in number) the scatter is very wide - 
little evidence of design here. Dunham Massey tenor (1854) does not 
appear acoustically to be a thin bell.

In the 'Grimthorpe' period, there are three bells which stand out as 
being thick: Mirfield (1869), St Pauls (1881) and Lymm (1891). 
Unfortunately we don't have the octave nominals of the old Worcester 
peal for comparison. Madresfield, listed among the 'Grimthorpe' 
peals, actually has a pretty average tenor octave nominal for the 
period at 1230 cents, though the trebles are much thicker than 
average for a peal of six.

Following Lymm, there were a number of other thick bells: 
Knightsbridge, Newcastle and the Great Bell of Tong (1892), and 
Norton (1896), one of the transition peals to true-harmonic tuning.

>From 1896 onwards, as one might expect, there is a considerable 
tightening of the spread, evidence of much improved control over 
designs and profiles. The list of bells from the 1890s onwards 
includes some classics: Towcester, Great John of Beverley, Exeter 
tenor, Newton-le-Willows, Louth tenor, Henfield, Chagford and 
Kingston (Dorset).

In 1925, another considerable change takes place, towards thinner 
bells. The first two tenors in this lighter scale are Tavistock and 
York Minster. The three thinnest bells from the 1920s and 30s are 
Little John at Nottingham (1928), Ashwater (1929) and Hosannah at 
Buckfast (1936). Dorking (1998) also stands out as rather thinner 
than average. There are two atypically thick tenors: Dolton of 1921 
and St Germans of 1984. In both cases these are replacements, 
presumably cast to match existing bells. Apart from these 
exceptions, the scale of thickness seems to have remained pretty 
constant for the past 80 years.

So, ignoring the early years, the bells seem to divide into three 
periods: 1850s to 1897, 1897 to 1925, and 1925 onwards. To the 
extent that octave nominal tuning represents scale of design, the 
change in 1925 appears as large as that in 1896/7.

I can email the full set of figures to anyone who wants to look at 
them in more detail.

Bill H