The tunes being rung by the main cathedral clock every quarter of an hour are commonly called the Westminster Chimes, because they are rung by the bells in the tower-incorrectly-called-Big-Ben in the Palace of Westminster.

Turns out that they were originally written in 1793 for the church of St Mary The Great in Cambridge, which is the church of the University of Cambridge.

Each quarter of an hour the tune is a bit longer, until by the end of the hour it has four separate sections.  It took me some time to realise that the tune does not simply get longer, but actually is different each time.  This is because a curious clock designer worked out that you actually only needed to set up five measures on your chiming system, if you could use them all twice, thus:

• Quarter past: Measure 1
• Half past: Measures 2 and 3
• Quarter to: Measures 4 and 5 and 1 (now going round for the second time)
• On the hour: Measures 2 and 3 and 4 and 5.

Which is satisfyingly clever.

You may notice that between measures 4 and 5 one note is repeated twice, which requires two separate hammers to do it in time, so Salisbury’s bells along with all the others using this pattern have two hammers on the lowest bell.

Oh, and you may also notice that the hour sequence starts with the third bell from the top.  When you are up at the Bells Level in the tower, if you look very closely as the hour approaches you will be able to see the cable on that bell just starting to tighten, which saves you jumping out of your skin when the ringing starts.

This site from the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors may give you more information than you wanted to know on how a mechanism to ring these chimes work, including how the clock can automatically make sure that the hour tune is the one actually rung on the hour.

It might be easier to get started by looking at the Old-est clock on the floor of the cathedral first, and see how the hour chimes are counted.

The post What are the Westminster Chimes? appeared first on 332 Steps.

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?

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