[Bell Historians] Dating a Bell

[BILLGJ at a...]

Thanks for all your suggestions about dating this bell. I am overwhelmed at 
the speed of response, being used to reading my email once a day!

No, I "forgot" to tell you the tower, not to whet your appetite but because I 
was looking for general suggestions rather than specific - hoping to learn by 
doing as well as to get an answer!

I realise that carbon-14 or thermoluminescence dating is not going to be 
appropriate, but what about the precious-metal content? My recollection is that 
(particularly) lead used to contain significant quantities of precious metals. 
But I don't know when they began to extract these before using the lead. 
However, as nobody has mentioned this, presumably it is not used.


I do have a photo, and will see if I can post it.
The bell has not been shown to be pre-reformation, so is probably not on any 
list. I just considered that as it was not marked, it might be fairly old, 
but I could be wrong. I hope you will be able to say when I get that photo 
posted.

Regards
Bill
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