Taylor's 19th century profiles

[Bill Hibbert]

We may have done this to exhaustion already, but . . .

I was at Dunham Massey (Taylor's oldest complete ten, 1854) on Monday 
taking some fresh recordings and actually saw the bells for the first 
time. The trebles had moderately domed crowns, the tenor had such a 
flat crown and sharply angled shoulder that it looked like it was 
laid out with a set-square. I have seen this difference many times in 
Taylor peals of later in the century (see the photo published here a 
while ago of the Institute ten in the foundry) but was fascinated to 
see it in this earlier peal.

I surmise that this was done to allow the trebles to be hung out from 
a wooden headstock compared with the tenors - all bells originally 
had canons. It was clearly not done for tonal purposes, the primes 
sharpen from 250 cents flat in the treble to 235 cents sharp (!!) in 
the tenor.

I didn't have a camera with me, so unfortunately have no photos.

Bill H