[Bell Historians] Re: Oldest Christian Bell

[Richard Smith]

Anne Willis wrote:

> 'Bells in England' by Tom Ingram claims that the church 
> has used bells for 1,500 years; initially the 'cowbell' 
> type.

500 AD seems a reasonable estimate for the introduction of 
Celtic quadrangular bells (i.e. 'cowbell' type bells) to 
Ireland.  Outside the British Isles, I'm only aware of three 
isolated examples of these bells: one each in Brittany, 
Switzerland and Bavaria.  It seems that they were 
essentially Irish artifacts that occasionally found their 
way outside Ireland.  I know of no evidence of bell 
production in mainland Europe between about 500 and 800, but 
that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't happening.

> Large bells in towers must have been around by the 7th 
> century as the Venerable Bede heard the bells tolling at 
> Whitby for Abbess Hilda on her death in 680.

I don't think you can infer that.  For a start, it wasn't 
Bede who heard the bell.  Bede reported that a nun named 
Begu heard it.  The Oxford World Classics edition of 
'Historia Ecclesiastica' translates Bede's text as follows:

   As she was resting in the sisters' dormitory, she suddenly
   heard in the air the well-known sound of the bell with
   which they used to be aroused to their prayers or called
   together when one of them had be summoned from the world.

To me that doesn't necessarily imply to me a large bell in a 
tower that could be heard over long distances.  It could 
have been no more than a door bell in the dormitory.  We 
know that the Romans used bells both as door bells and for 
calling servants (see Percival Price's book, p 76), so it's 
no great leap to suppose that they had them in 
Northumberland in the 7th century.

To my mind, it's not until the 10th century that the 
evidence for tower bells in England becomes overwhelming.

RAS