Taylor's 1895

[David Bryant]

Alan Birney and I inspected the bells at various places in Yorkshire over the weekend, inclusing Wetwang, an unfortunately-named village in East Yorkshire. The bells are a ring of three comprising an 1895 Taylor treble, 2nd by Samuel Smith I of York, and pre-Reformation York foundry tenor (7-0-12 in A).

Several points:

Firstly, the treble has a number on the inside of its crown - I've seen this before on Taylor bells of this era. I thought they were simply running serial numbers as the four bells of the same year at Stockton on the Forest are numbered 148 to 151. However, the treble at Wetwang is also 151, so that suggests I'm wrong. Does anybody know what they actually are? Strickle numbers?

Second point, it was interesting to note that the treble of 1895 is a maiden bell, as is the pre-Reformation tenor. The 2nd, however, has been quite heavily machine tuned from the soundbow nearly up to the shoulder. This was clearly done by Taylor's in 1895. What were they aiming for? The tuning is too extensive to be simply for adjusting the nominal, and yet the other two bells are maiden.

Finally, the bells have fittings by Taylor's 1895 including cast iron headstocks. The bearings are plain and in cast iron housings let into the frame heads (the frame is pitch pine and probably locally-made). The bearings covers do not have the wick-type oil feaders standard on slightly later Taylor plain bearings. Does anybody know exactly when these were intruduced?

David

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