[Bell Historians] Faculties

[David Bryant]

>If an individual has bought a second hand bell, to augment an existing 
>ring,
>and the same individual is paying for its tuning and hanging, and the bell
>is to be placed in an existing empty pit, could the work to the bell and 
>its
>fittings be carried out without a faculty? I assume that faculties are
>required for bells to be removed from or placed in a tower and that the 
>said
>faculty only becomes strictly necessary when the bell is actually hung.

If the bell is the property of the individual at the time when the work to 
it is carried out, then surely it is up to them what they do with their own 
property. Presumably it only becomes a faculty matter when the bell is 
either installed and / or formally given to the church.

>Clearly there is a risk in that the individual pays for the work and then a
>faculty is not forthcoming - I believe one of the semitones in a Yorkshire
>twelve caused such problems.

I can think of another similar example elsewhere in Yorkshire. So far as I'm 
aware, when cases like this arise, a faculty (retorospective if necessary) 
is always granted in the end. Unless anyone knows of any examples where a 
diocese have absolutely refused to grant a faculty?
David