[Bell Historians] Godalming

['Peter Rivet' peter@plrivet.plus.com [bellhistorians]]

The whole question of what amounts to recasting was raised at the DAC Bell Advisers’ Conference in Warwick in 2016.  Andrew Wilby, speaking on behalf of Taylors, suggested that whether recasting was a practicable option depended on what was being traded in.  If they were asked to recast an early nineteenth century Mears bell, they could be certain that the material used was of top quality.  If on the other hand it came from – say – Murphy of Dublin there was a possibility that it included a whole lot of stuff that really shouldn’t be there.

 

So here is my own view.  Historically, if you had a small itinerant bellfounder turning up somewhere out of the way to replace a bell, all or most of the metal came from the one which was being replaced.  There wasn’t much else readily available, so recasting is what happened.  But as soon as you got larger foundries working on their own premises  there was bound to be a bit of flexibility.  In north Lancashire we have the example of a 1724 bell cast by Samuel Smith II of York.  Church records indicated that the old bell was sent across the Pennines for recasting and came back eight days later.  Given the state of the roads at the time this must have been a replacement; the Smiths had a new bell lined up for the return journey.  Similarly I doubt if many of the numerous eighteenth century rings of Rudhall or Whitechapel bells were really recastings of old ones.  In most cases, they didn’t claim they were.

 

The choice of inscription on the Godalming bells is a bit unfortunate, but as Matthew Higby points out that is presumably what the foundry were asked to put on them.  

 

Peter Rivet

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