Do you have bell ringers?

A sharp-eyed visitor noticed that our big bell might once have been rung with ropes.

Up in our bell chamber we have five bells, each struck with hammers pulled by a clock two floors further down.  Four are used to play the Westminster Chimes at each quarter of an hour, and the fifth strikes the hour.

The bells were originally in a separate bell tower where they were swung and could be rung with ropes.  The wooden beam that you can see above the hour bell in this picture is indeed a “headstock”, part of the original mechanism used in the bell tower after it was recast in 1661.

This next picture is linked to the Belfry Upkeep website where you can find out more about headstocks and attachment methods.  This is just one tiny corner of the terribly fascinating portal provided by the Central Council of Church Bellringers.  Click on it at your peril…

Back at our own story; by 1780 the bell tower was in such disrepair that James Wyatt decided to demolish it and move the bells into the central tower of the cathedral.

The forces generated by a swinging bell are very considerable, with each bell able to generate 4 times its weight horizontally and twice its weight vertically and so they sensibly decided that adding this pressure to the already-fragile central tower would be a bad idea.  Instead they hung the bells “dead”, fixing them permanently to a framework, and just hitting them with hammers.  The hammers are now pulled by cables from an electrically-operated clock a couple of stories further down the tower.

This may have piqued your Curiosity further:

• What are the Westminster Chimes?
• Where was the original bell tower?
• Why was the bell recast in 1661?
• How did they get the bell up here?
• Who was Wyatt?
• Can you ring any of the bells by hand?