Beverley/Downside Bourdon of 1900

[Susan Dalton]

Sorry - this is rather old hat now. But I have been thinking and delving 
further, and anyway I never answered Bill Hibbert's question.

Whilst I seem to remember reading something about Canon Nolloth and the
prominent fourth in this bell, the human memory can play tricks and mine is
no exception. What I ought to have said in my previous posting is 'the
fourth is as disturbing now at Downside as it must have been to Canon
Nolloth at Beverley Minster' (or words to that effect). Whatever the reason
- the prominent fourth, the imperfect casting, or the wrong strike-note to
go with the new ring of ten at the Minster cast and hung in the following
year - the bell WAS rejected and it was surely Nolloth, as incumbent,
financier, and great protagonist of Taylors and their work at Beverley, York
Minster and elsewhere (rather as David Potter has been more recently!) who
did the rejecting or at least acquiesced in it. I question whether this was
finally because of the strike-note, because as DLC has pointed out the bell
was subsequently retuned to the same note as the present Beverley bourdon.
The cutting in the bell, which I have examined closely, would be consistent
with the flattening by about a semitone of all the significant notes
(including the tirestome fourth!)
Much was published at the time and in 1902 and 1908 in Bell News and I have
this, but I have not seen correspondence and other records at Taylors beyond
what has been published on this list, nor indeed have I seen any that might
survive at Beverley. The former might explain (among other things) the
matter of tuning machines and their use on the bell in question. It is
stated clearly in Bell News (13th October 1900) that the bell 'has been
tuned on the principles propounded by the late Canon Simpson' and that 'the
founders ... have erected in their works a large machine capable of tuning
bells of the largest size in this method'. This presumably is the machine
which was acquired in April 1900 (see p 132 in Trevor Jennings's book), in
plenty of time to do whatever tuning was deemed necessary to the first
Beverley bourdon before it was first hung.

By the way, Hastings stays had their origin at Taylors long before iron
stocks and I believe the very first were those fitted to the wooden stocks
of the ring of four at Tugby in 1887. (These have now gone.)
Moulding lines on bells also performed an important function when it came to
placing the letters etc. of the inscription on the model (or 'dummy') bell.
They helped to keep them in place and straight.

Christopher Dalton.