[Bell Historians] Godalming

[Roderic Bickerton rodbick@gmail.com [bellhistorians]]

I wondered why dove had not kept the details of the old ring?

On 3 Sep 2017 12:42 pm, "Ted Steele teds.bells at tesco.net [bellhistorians]" <
bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> I raised correspondence on the change-ringers e-list about the new bells
> at Godalming, following the front page article in this week's RW. It
> seems that contrary to what is stated clearly in the inscriptions on
> the bells, they were not recast at all but are totally new metal.
> Perhaps more significantly the old bells still exist, which to my mind
> makes a nonsense of the claim that they were recast.
>
> My concern really centres around historical accuracy and what a bell
> historian would make of such a situation when tracing the history of a
> peal of bells. Would not the inscriptions be (normally) regarded as
> definitive? The response to my query was that founders would rarely
> re-use the actual metal of the original bells when recasting; as the
> composition of the bronze would be unknown. If that is the case then it
> seems to undermine even more the notion that bells have been "recast"
> since it suggests that the retention of the old material was not even
> considered desirable and that there was no actual wish to maintain any
> semblance of a continuum from one bell to the next.
>
> What do the historians think of this? Apparently there are other
> instances of the same thing and Imber is given as a direct parallel. Of
> course it is accepted that at times extra metal must be added and that
> if more than one bell is recast at the same time the metal will be
> mixed. Might it be sufficient to claim that a bell has been recast if
> the old inscriptions are reproduced? But then what of the old bell
> remains in existence?
>
> Ted
> 
>
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