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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The best accounts of G&J are in George
Elphick's "Sussex" and Bill Butler's "Musical Handbells", and I generally regard
the dates there as being 'best available' for the official changes in company
name. At some point, I ought to check company registration and business
directory sources for this firm as I now have for a number of
others.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The listing I sent yesterday is based entirely
on signatures found in inscriptions - and it shows a problem (i.e. match against
official dates) rather than offering a definitive guide. There is, of course,
the possibility of innacuracy of recording (people not being quite careful
enough in noting whether a bell says G&B or G&B & Co etc) - although
I tried not to include bells where details seemed vague or suspect. What made me
start down this route of exploration was the fact that clock frames, in
particular, are unreliable - as the dates for the occurrence of different
company names seem to be even more wild than those found on bells. What I would
say here, though, is that there are many examples of bells of this period not in
my sample list because the only available information is an attribution to a
founder - not the actual inscription (i.e. writers have thought "Gillett =
boring = no need to record in full" or have merely taken details from tower
notices). Recording full inscriptions really is quite important in establishing
dates and names with accuracy.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1877 may be a starting date, but I haven't found
any proper record (i.e. recording inscriptions) of bells of this year - the
first year the firm cast bells themselves. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Re G&J, John Baldwin has just checked
Stockleigh English with John Scott and the two bells there are "signed" by
G&J in 1890 - so that takes the occurrence of G&J as a signature back to
1890. As I recall from a trawl of the records, output from the foundry was quite
low in the period around 1890 - after an initial explosion of activity in the
1880s - and examples are quite thin on the ground. It would be good to know of
more inscriptions from bells of this period in order to pinpoint the change more
closely. At the moment, the sample is too small for reliable
interpretation</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CP</FONT></DIV>
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