[Bell Historians] Preshute - all bells added to NBR as 'On Pres List' between 2009 & 2015 (same for Westbury)

[Matthew Higby]

That said, I am curious to know how these Wiltshire rings have crept into the lists – and why equally eligible rings elsewhere haven’t yet made it. I suspect that someone in Salisbury Diocese has been quite astute and ahead of the game


That's easy - because it was the opinion of someone, that they should be listed!
I remember being at a CBC bell advisors conference some years back, where they laid out their plans for 'expanding' the scope of bells which they considered worthy of preservation. That included 'modern rings of exceptional tonal quality' among a number of other things. I remember Alan Hughes pointing out that it they continued along those lines, they could end up listing the majority of the bells in the UK, and he expressed concerns over the knock-on effect on the trade!
I believe the Wiltshire rings were listed with this review in mind.
I find that the attitude of the CBC towards work on listed bells is really inconsistent these days. It states in their 'code of practice' that "a ring of bells should sound balanced and in tune". They have however, completely contradicted that in their advice to parishes. 
Often faculty applications insist that the CBC is consulted on work to listed bells. Their response is normally "The CBC feels that the parish have not made a good enough case for us to consider"  I have lost count of the number of times I have read this line. The last few of their replies that I have seen are also riddled with factual errors (which is a shame). I remember their attitude towards the bells at Catworth, Cambridgeshire, they said that a peal of bells which contained two bells of the same note would make a "characterful ring" - this resulted in a fine sounding medieval bell being removed from the peal and hung dead along side. They have recently written to the parish of South Wraxall, in Wiltshire, stating that they not support some minimal tuning of the 3 of the 6 bells, to bring them into a true musical scale. Hopefully the chancellor has seen sense on this one...
When I first had dealings with the CBC, you could rely on their expertise to give balanced advice - these days they appear to have inexperienced staff who prefer to push conservation beyond all else. I have no idea who sits on the CBC clocks and bells committee these days - perhaps someone could enlighten us??
With all good wishes,
Matthew  _filtered {} _filtered {}#yiv3526379227 p.yiv3526379227MsoNormal, #yiv3526379227 li.yiv3526379227MsoNormal, #yiv3526379227 div.yiv3526379227MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:New serif;}#yiv3526379227 a:link, #yiv3526379227 span.yiv3526379227MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv3526379227 a:visited, #yiv3526379227 span.yiv3526379227MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv3526379227 span.yiv3526379227EmailStyle17 {font-family:sans-serif;color:#1F497D;}#yiv3526379227 .yiv3526379227MsoChpDefault {font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv3526379227 div.yiv3526379227WordSection1 {}
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