[Bell Historians] Godalming

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

The dixionary says
Recast : "Give (a metal object) a different form by melting it down and
reshaping it."
That makes it a rather im precise term as melting causes changes and
required volumes differ. The only cardinal is that it is primarily remade
from the original material. The inscription is incorrect if the original
was not melted down.

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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