[Bell Historians] Woodchurch etc

[CHRIS PICKFORD]

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Brief contribution this time, but Giles misses the point. Accuracy of weigh=
ing isn't really the key issue. It's simply important (in my view) to recor=
d the "best available" weights of bells as one element in a range of descri=
ptive data.

I've aired my views on this before too. But I think the essence is that we =
should be looking for the weights as recorded at different times in the his=
tory of a bell, and the weight to go in "Dove" and other reference sources =
(including area websites) should be the most recent and/or best available "=
recorded weight".

In the case of Woodchurch, a "duff" weight seems to have crept into a numbe=
r of guides through some error. The correction (a discrepancy of 4lbs, as h=
as been noted) isn't earth-shattering or significant, but we should be maki=
ng amendments to guides in the interests of accuracy - accuracy of informat=
ion, that is, and not necessarily accuracy of weight.

This may seem like a semantic difference, but this way of looking at the da=
ta does help in an area where a) weighing doesn't seem to be reliably accur=
ate, and b) a reasonably practical compromise is needed. Think of figures a=
s "recorded weights" (rather than exact or accurate weights) and we have a =
pragmatic solution

CP

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