[Bell Historians] Heythrop, Oxon, and Albrighton, Shropshire

[Richard Offen]

> We had a pleasant ring at Heythrop in 1979 before the tenor wheel 
was
> (sadly) replaced by a lever. Like all T C Lewis's (not very many) 
bells,
> they are beautiful castings with quite interesting tuning. And 
while the
> bells now at Kingsbury may be a maiden eight, not all Lewis's bells 
were:
> he had a tuning machine and used it quite extensively on two of the 
Heythrop
> bells.
> 

Are you sure he had a tuning machine? I quote from George Elphick's 
Church Bells of Sussex:

"He was by nature an artist and set himself very high standards. 
About 1878 he started up as a bellfounder and always cast maiden 
bells, allowing no subsequent tuning whatsoever. To obtain his 
heaviest ring of eight - St Andrew's, Wells Street (now Kingsbury) - 
he cast more than twenty bells to obtain the desired results."

Certainly his ring of six at Shipbourne, in Kent, are a miden peal.

R.