[Bell Historians] Southwark.

[David Cawley]

charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hearing Jim's account of course reminds me of another ring which survived t=
he blitz - namely the Temple Church bells, Bristol, which were taken down t=
he summer after the blitz. (and are now in Bristol Cathedral). The 1887 Tay=
lor High-A frame is still in the tower. See my article in the Chredition of=
the RW.

DLC
----- Original Message -----=20
From: jim phillips=20
To: Bell Historians=20
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 10:37 PM
Subject: [Bell Historians] Southwark.


DLC wrote:-
>St Andrew, Plymouth, I believe, remained in the undamaged tower - the=20
>church being gutted.

They did indeed and had a remarkable escape. I rang there with Tom Myers=
=20
and his dad G Harry Myers when the church was just a roofless shell with=
=20
only the outside walls remaining. Tom told me that on the night of 21st=
=20
March 1941 there was the most ferocious attack on Plymouth which followed=
=20
one the previous night in which the church had been damaged. When the f=
ire=20
brigade reached the church it was well ablaze and they realised they coul=
d=20
not save it. However, across the rear of the church, where it met the ba=
se=20
of the tower, there hung a heavy dossal curtain to keep the drafts out. =
The=20
fireman played their hoses on this curtain in a determined effort to save=
=20
the tower and when the curtain finally went due to the intense heat, the=
=20
fireman then played the hoses on to the wooden bell hole cover in the sto=
ne=20
vaulting at the base of the tower. Fortunately the medieval craftsman wh=
o=20
built the tower had constructed a stone vault at its base where it entere=
d=20
the church, and also had made the tower louvres of stone and close togeth=
er.=20
The morning after the raid Tom and his dad went up to the belfry and foun=
d=20
all the louvres blocked up with burnt wood and ashes. St Andrew's was th=
e=20
mother church of Plymouth and meant a lot to the residents of that city.


>There is a photograph of the new 1911 tenor (then 50-0-21

I was told that after the war the bell was tuned from B to B-flat in orde=
r=20
to compete with St Paul's. Is this correct?=20



---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---
Yahoo! Groups Links

a.. To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bellhistorians/
=20=20=20=20=20=20
b.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
bellhistorians-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
=20=20=20=20=20=20
c.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service=
.=20


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ringingworld.co.uk/pipermail/bell-historians/attachments/20050121/852c8027/attachment.html>