[Bell Historians] Eastry Sanctus Bell

[David Cawley]

Some of this seems to be from an off-list exchange; or did I again miss it?

Gosh there are some howlers in these remarks about Eastry, not least of which is the remark about the replacement of "the old cracked fourth". It was the cracked third which was replaced. The fourth isn't cracked. The old third was found to be cracked by Taylors in 1934. In 1967 they put the bells on ball-bearings, noting again the crack. The bell was replaced in 1975 after quite an extended correspondence between Alan Berry, Nick Davies, myself, the DAC and the parish (and Taylors). The foundry's philistine option of recasting one of only four bells by Henry Wilnar of Borden gave way to replacement. The bell was given as a memorial and hung on the Bowell fittings of its predecessor. The odd thing is that JT&Co, when estimating for recasting, slagged off the welding option, amongst other things, because the cracked bell was "deficient in weight and thickness". And the new bell is 2 1/2" inches SMALLER and no doubt around 2-cwt lighter than the "deficient" bell!

True they are not a well-tuned five, the two Taylor bells (treble & new 3rd) being as much as 19# and 21# in respect of the tenor. Neither is an old style bell (as has been said of the new 3rd) and I will produce statements in support of that in my next posting. But they sound impressive enough if not inspiring, not least when you ring the tenor through a peal as I did on June 1st 1968. The St Simon's was not fun.

DLC 
 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dickon Love 
  To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 11:02 PM
  Subject: RE: [Bell Historians] Eastry Sanctus Bell


  > 1975-wasn't it around that time that a London Company tuned a 
  > light eight in Kent into dustbins, that had to be replaced by a 
  > fine Taylor eight in the 1990's?
  > 
  > Alan

  Now don't get me started...

  > Ha ha!

  :) ... ie the rest TIC ...

  > Quite true. In fairness, they [Tunstall] were a very uninspiring eight
  before 
  > tuning commenced

  Uninspiring possibly...

  > and were even worse after! 

  Offensive to listen too ... possibly (I have the digitised recordings).

  > Eastry were never a well tuned five and sounded even worse after the
  > old, cracked fourth was replaced!

  Fives are supposed to sound awful. That said, I never rang (or have
  never rung) on them. They are on my list...

  DrL



              
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