[Bell Historians] ] Origin of church towers

[Anne Willis]

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2 - Summoning St Michael - Early Romanesque Towers in Lincolnshire; David
Stocker and Paul Everson; Oxbow books, 2006. ISBN 184217 123 1. (I've
only just come across this, not read it, but it includes an interesting
looking chapter: 'Symbols of the Psychopomp; a motivation for tower
building?'

Regards

-- 
John Harrison
Website http://jaharrison.me.uk

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I am told that Stocker and Everson's thesis (from memory!) is that coffins
lay overnight in the ground-floor tower room before the funeral service.

 

The funeral procession leaving the church via the west door of the tower.

 

> The passing bell, summoning the Psychopomp (wonderful term - the role
shared by Michael and Charon), was rung from bell chambers newly fashionable
in the period and detectable where surviving by the diagnostic openings.

 

The openings being positioned so that the exact moment that the body was
lowered into the grave could be observed, and the bell silenced.

 

AW

           
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