[Bell Historians] Accedents, was Stanton St John

[Bickerton, Roderic K (SELEX) (UK)]

Accidents I know about.
 
1, St Peters St Albans
Sudden failure of 5th gudgeon.
the bell ground to a halt with minimal damage and no injury.
Cause, when Whitechapel put the bell on balls they turned down the
existing gudgeon to to small a diameter to fit a sleeve to make it take
a standard baring. It fatigued and snapped cleanly.
2 Waltham Abby
Failed Gudgeon
the bell came to a halt severely damaging the wheel. no injury. Taylor
installation cause unknown
3 Hitchin tenor came away from headstock.
Nothing came through and there was no injury.
Shortly after a professional rehang. I cannot remember the cause of the
failure.
4 the well documented failure at Settle.
No injury and minimal damage.
 
The point I am making is that a catastrophic failure of a component when
a bell is being ruing is most unlikely to involve injury and the damage
is not colossal or massively expensive, normally limited to only the
single bell and fittings effected.
The fact that these are all failures of professional work is not
relevant as only about 1 out of 20 jobs are armature work, and my sample
is much to small.
 
There have been accidents working on bells, and the odd fatality.
Has any church ever been held responsible in uk and had to pay out?
 
Another point worth making, if a professional job goes wrong, large sums
are involved and the trail of responsibility can be unclear and
expensive to resolve.
 
If an armature job goes wrong then much less money is involved and in
all probability little will be actually lost, in that unringable bells
remain unringable, but no worse than before.
the worst I know about is a project which died after dismantling a lot
of the ringing gear. Those who were the "movers" just gave up.
 
 


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