Early sets of handbells.

[Richard Offen]

--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "jim phillips" <jim at p...> 
wrote:
> WB wrote:-
> 
> "The earliest set of handbells I've found is at the Mary Arden 
House and
> Country Museum. I examined the bells in the 1980s and found them 
to be a set
> of Cor bells, twelve in number, which had originally come from
> Shipton-on-Stour. I would date them from about 1690 to 1710. They 
were not
> all cast at the same time as they were by different members of the 
family.
> I'm afraid I cannot be more specific as I'm unable to lay my hands 
on my
> records, but "Musical Handbells", pp 22 and 23 discusses them."
> 
> This is much earlier than I would have thought and I wonder if the 
bells are
> a diatonic set which could be used for change ringing and what 
sound do they
> produce and how were they tuned (I cannot immediately look them up 
in the
> book). Another question concerns 'pocket handbells' produced by 
Whitchapel
> around the turn of the century. What was the maximum number that 
could be
> obtained in a set? I can remember a large set (numerical) at 
Gwennap
> (Cornwall) when I was at school but these have now gone. I know 
of another
> set of eight pocket bells which were used in the trenches in WW1 
and which
> were subsequently won in a raffle by the late Reuben Sanders.

The 'pocket' sets of handbells you mention were simply Whitechapel's 
standard 0 or 00 range, as used for the top octaves of tune ringing 
sets. Theses have been part of their standard range for well over 
a century. As they produce two cromatic octaves (from three 
octaves above middle C down, if memory serves me correctly), you 
could have any number of change ringing combinations.

R