[Bell Historians] Re: serious research?

[David Bryant]

> One of the things that constantly annoys me about the Wiltshire VCH is the
> lack of research when it comes to bells. The compiler takes immense pains
> to read a large number of documents on land and its inheritance, and then
> consults Walters' 'Church Bells of Wiltshire'for the bells, and very
rarely
> bothers to go to such documents as churchwardens' accounts. Consequently
> mistakes are perpetrated and ommissions made. The Bradford VCH was
written
> in 1951 and makes no mention of the Gillett 8 at Christ Church cast in
1923.
> As for the Marlborough St Peter entry I can only say don't believe it.

The RCHME volumes are just as bad. The York ones are terrible when it come
to bells (and bellframes, which are also included). They've built up an
entirely spurious chronology of bellframe development in York, dating at
least half of the frames wrongly by a century or more. Basically, their
research tactic seems to have been to find an entry relating to a bellframe,
then assume it is of that date even when a) it is obvious to anyone who
knows what they're looking at that the dates they've assigned to many of the
frames are wrong and b) there is actually documentary evidence for the
contruction of most of them - they just didn't look in the right places.

I did think the Chichester book took the biscuit though - it's a large,
authoritative-seeming hardback with a glossy dust jacket, it seems generally
well researched but contains such utter drivel regarding the bells!

David