Mancroft tenor

[oakcroft13]

Andrew Bull:
> The bottom row are the finished figures, which tally very closely with Bill Hibbert's measured figures

I always agree with Taylors :-)

Thanks from me too to Andrew Higson for posting the details from the job book. As Andew Bull says, the tenor was tuned down a whopping 40 cents. The inner tuning of the bell was substantially unchanged, the result of the tuning was to get the tenor more in tune with the rest of the peal.

The nominals in the rest of the peal are a bit wild. The 'as received' figures for the tenor show that its original nominal was exactly an octave below that of the fifth. Is this co-incidence or was it a choice by Mears of what to make it to? Unfortunately the fifth is by far the sharpest bell in the peal, making the tenor uncomfortably sharp relative to most of the bells. The 1925 retune put its nominal exactly right compared with the 11th and 9th, allowing for stretch.

When I went to record the Mancroft bells in 2004, there was nowhere convenient to hang a microphone above the bells. After a few throws, I got a bolt tied to a long piece of string over one of the roof beams. Unfortunately the string jammed in a crack and broke as I attempted to pull the microphone up. The recordings were eventually taken with the microphone hung over the head of a broom tied to the frame with the remains of the ball of string.

Bill H