[Bell Historians] 16th and 17th century tuning

[billy_clarke03]

I believe an example of 17th century tuning may be found at 
St.Mary's Church, Blessington, Co.Wicklow (~14cwt ring of 6 by 
J.Bartlett 1683).

Six bells of the former ring of 8 at St.Patricks Cathedral, Dublin 
were re-distributed to different churches around the country when 
the new 45cwt 10 was installed in 1897. The original 3rd and Tenor 
still remain in the tower, but I know that Charlie Reede went and 
got individual recordings of the other 6 bells.  He then had somebody
edit the recordings to arrange them in 'rounds' to hear what the old 
8 might have sounded like.  Don't know if they had been re-tuned (I 
believe some were recast) but the original 8 were by Perdue (1670).

Billy 

 



--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "Chris Pickford" 
<c.j.pickford.t21 at ...> wrote:
>
> Nothing significant to contribute on this issue, but I think two 
points are worth making:
> 
> 1. There are now very few surviving examples of sets of bells that 
have not been retuned (and in the case of old scratch tuning and 
edging we don't actually know when this was done).
> 
> 2. Before the conservation extremists say "told you so - we should 
never have allowed tuning" - we should remember that within the 
bellfounders archives of at least three of the main firms, there are 
detailed records of the pitches and tuning of bells prior to 
retuning or recasting.
> 
> In other words, the bells themselves may have been recast or 
altered, BUT if someone really wanted to do a serious study on this, 
some potentially useful stuff does exist. I imagine that access to 
the relevant foundry records could be negotiated for such a purpose 
> 
> CP
>