[Bell Historians] Trinity Church bells, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

[David Cawley]

Just to complete the previous list: 

The 1877/80 Mears catalogue (it is in a different format and was I think largely laid out in 1877, with an extra page added at a reprinting in 1880) gives:

Among places where 8 bells have been supplied:
Isle of Trinidad, Catholic Church. Weight of largest bell - cwt 13

Among places where 6 bells have been supplied
Isle of Trinidad, New Church. Weight of largest bell - cwt 16

It would be interesting as Carl says to know more about the RC bells. As has been stated on this site before, it was rare, prior to c 1850, for sets of bells cast in England to be fitted up other than for full-circle ringing (unless they were simply clock bells, more often than not at the time ting-tang and hour); the only sets I can think of readily are the Royal Exchange bells which, in their various incarnations have always been hung 'dead' and Stapleford in Leicestershire, where the front five of an old six were hung 'dead' in the mid 18th-century, to facilitate being played by a barrell. And since the 16 cwt Trinidad six seems (a) to have been at the 'New Church' and (b) possibly - as in Malcolm's extract - able to be properly rung for a few years, one is tempted to ask if interest in them waned following the earthquake and the installation of the RC bells? All very conjectural, but worth following up.

DLC

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Carl S Zimmerman 
  To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2008 12:26 AM
  Subject: Re: [Bell Historians] Trinity Church bells, Port of Spain, Trinidad.


  At 16:59 +0100 08/10/25, David Cawley wrote:
  >Most of these dates are at variance with the GCNA site; so it would 
  >be interesting to know ther source for their dates of 1819 [1] 1871 
  >[1] 1880 [2] and unknown [4].

  Source: RW 14 Apr 1995, p.377, text and photos. I assume that the 
  visitor who reported these bells could not inspect four of them 
  closely enough to see what dates are in the inscriptions.

  David, thanks for the information from the Whitechapel catalogues. 
  None of that information was available to me before. Your words 
  "five new bells (two new and three recast) to make the chime of eight 
  in 1880" are certainly a logical deduction, but I don't see the 
  supporting evidence in the extracts which you cited. However, some 
  amount of recasting is certainly possible in view of the quotation 
  about damage to the church in 1825.

  I wonder whether the 5-bell notation in the 1884 catalogue is similar 
  to the 8-bell notation in the later catalogues - a summary of work 
  completed, rather than the report of a single job. If the recasting 
  of bells damaged in 1825 (or later) occurred in 1871, and the 
  expansion from 6 to 8 occurred in 1880, that would fit. But 1819 
  remains unexplained.

  Anybody have a friend in Trinidad who could go look for us? ;-)

  Carl
  GCNA Webmaster

  P.S. From elsewhere on the Web: Trinity Church became Trinity 
  Cathedral, and in 1930 the British colonial government gave to 
  Trinity a tower clock; it was accompanied by a "Westminster 
  eight-bell chime system" given by a ship's captain in memory of his 
  wife.

  P.P.S. I'd love to know which Catholic Church got an octave in 1830, 
  and whether it survives!


              
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