[Bell Historians] Taunton St. Mary

[David Bryant]

"This is in the very early stages at the moment with no concrete plans made as of yet. All being well we hope to launch an appeal later this year and find a solution to sort out what often referred to as the "worse ring of 12 in the country"."

Eleven or twelve years ago (I was the steeple keeper at the time) I had inspections done by Taylor's, Whitechapel and Nicholson Engineering - I expect the reports will all be in the church records. The bells are certainly too high in the tower, and the idea was to install a new frame in the current middle chamber, which would necessitate putting them on two levels as the tower is narrower here. The bells themselves are awful, and my personal view is that it would be throwing good money after bad to rehang them - as the saying goes, 'you can't polish a turd'! There would be no problem with scrapping most of them - they are Victorian or C20 and of no merit, with the exception of the Bilbie 11th, which if necessary could be retained as a service bell. Given how much the tower moves, the best option was probably that of a new 12 of slightly reduced weight (around 25 cwt tenor), with a flat 6th to give a light 8. I left Taunton for university shortly afterwards, and never returned to live in the town.
Best of luck, anyway!
David 		 	   		             
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ringingworld.co.uk/pipermail/bell-historians/attachments/20120226/27fb28ce/attachment.html>