The Use and Abuse of Church Bells; With Practical Suggestions Concerning Them

THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE CHURCH BELLS, WITH Practical Suggestions concerning them.
BY WALTER BLUNT, A.M., A PRIEST OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
LONDON: JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET. MDCCCXLVI.

LONDON: PRINTED BY JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET.

It has fallen to the writer’s lot, in the Divine dispensation, to be entrusted with the care, or joint care, of very many parishes in various parts of England: and he knows not any one external matter, common to them all, and to the neighbourhoods surrounding them, which has caused him more pain than the ordinary use, and the almost utter neglect for their own proper purposes, of the Church Bells.
Indeed, so much is the proper use of these holy instruments of edification (for such they really are) generally lost sight of, that among all the New Churches which have been builded during the last few years, scarcely any have more than one Bell; a greater number being considered a vain superfluity, a kind of ecclesiastical luxury—or, by deeper thinkers, a link between the Church and the world (and that often in its fiercest contentions, vainest hours, and most carnal aspect) which we may well be rid of.
In our older Churches, the position of the Belfry (on the floor of the Church, immediately communicating with the Nave, generally laid entirely open to it, often, too, having no other entrance, and not unfrequently forming the passage between the Nave and Chancel) is sufficient to point out to every thinking person in the parish the very sacred character which was attached to their Bells when they were first hung, the holy purposes to which they were dedicated—and how solemn a matter, how truly a service of Almighty God, the Ringing of them was then esteemed.
In other Churches, almost always of a later date, we find the original position of the Ringers at a higher level, upon a floor in the Tower. But the Belfry was still laid open, by an arch, to the body of the Church—thus yielding evidence that the Ringing of the Bells was still esteemed a very sacred thing.