What are the Westminster Chimes?

Or, why do so many churches ring the same tune?

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.