William Wooding Starmer

[jim phillips]

Bill Hibbert wrote:-
"I was in the British Library the other day, reading 'How Coventry
Bells were lost'."
The complete story of Coventry Bells is contained in Chris Pickford's
fascinating book and I am sure there remain some copies for sale. I was
very glad to have known both E A Young and A A Hughes. Alex Young was the
last person I knew to use a silver ear trumpet and he had a point when he
referred to "the harp like quality of the traditional English bell". Frank
Smallwood once told me that the old Coventry bells were of superb tonal
quality as he had heard them as a youngster. I am sure he only heard them
chimed and like all these things I never sought to pursue the circumstances
in which he heard them. There must have been something about the old
Coventry bells for such a fuss to have been made. There was also
controversy over Bow. The back ten of the old ring were of superb and
unique tonal quality as evidenced by them being used for the BBC time
interval which sometimes was long enough to take the bells up to queens and
back. Along came Croydon who said the old Bow tenor was cracked. Bert
Hughes told me he had spent a day going over the old tenor with paraffin and
chalk and nowhere could he find any evidence of a crack. He was as
straight as a die and I believed him. Frank Darby, who once worked for G&J,
told me that a screw jack applied in the right place would soon crack any
bell. It is an interesting fact that the inscription on the Whitechapel
tenor makes no reference to the Croydon recast.