St Paul's Cathedral

[oakcroft13]

David Cawley:

> On Grimthorpe rings on which Bill hasn't rung:
> is he excluding St Paul's, over which of course
> Taylor and Denison had a battle 

Quoting from W. T. Cook's "The Bells of St Paul's", 2nd edition 1984:

Sir Edmund's specfication for the new ring at St. Paul's was for 
twelve bells with a tenor of three tons in the key of D flat. 
However, Mr. Taylor knew that a ring of twelve bells of that weight 
would be much too heavy for such a key, so he purposely 'made a 
mistake', as he afterwards described it, and cast them in the key of 
B flat. Apparently Sir Edmund was very angry about this, and 
announced that "the bells were not according to contract, and would 
be thrown back on the founder's hands". However, common sense and 
reason prevailed, and the ring of bells was accepted in its present 
form.

I don't think of St Paul's as a 'Grimthorpe' ring for this reason, 
but rather as a grand post-Grimthorpe experiment, beginning the 
process of design evolution that had such dramatic results 20 years 
later. St Paul's are let down by the trebles, but that is another 
story.

Bill H