[Bell Historians] Inscription Bands

[David Bryant]

> The lion's head cannons from Kingsbury, Warks, are now table edge
> decoration with the top of one other bell kept in the ringing room.

The centrepiece of the table is the canon head from the tenor, which was
trepanned out when the bell was scrapped. There are lions and bishops on the
canons from some of the other bells around the table edge. The bells were
all Taylor's and of 1849. From about 1849 to the late 1850s Taylor's cast a
number of bells with finely ornamented canons, the figures including lions,
dogs, wolves, bishops, kings, sphinxes and several others. Usually it was
only the pair of single canons which were so ornamented, although
occasionally (as with Kingsbury tenor) all six were. From about 1860
Taylor's moved to using radial canons, whcih tended not to have heads but
often had fine cable mouldings; the 3rd at Beerrcrocombe, Somerset, is an
example which springs to mind. The canons were retained and a
canon-retaining stock fitted when the bells there were rehung and augmented
as a Millennium project. From the later 1860s until they stopped casting
with canons at all Taylor's used plain angular canons of ordinary layout.

There are some 'heads' canons and the moulds from which some of them were
made in the bellfoundry museum.

David