Before leaving the subject, may I venture here a protest against the absurdities perpetrated by the artists of Christmas cards and illustrated magazines, in the attempt to render the form of a bell and the method in which it is rung? It is certain that few can ever have visited either belfry or ringing-chamber! Plate [29] gives a more truthful rendering of the method of ringing.
It may be fairly claimed as one of the far-reaching effects of the Church Revival that the conditions of our belfries and the conduct of our ringers will compare very favourably with what it was some forty or fifty years ago. Where the more accessible portions of the fabric were given over to dirt and neglect, and slovenliness was the chief feature of all ordinary forms of worship, it was hardly surprising that the towers and their internal arrangements were neglected, and frequently given over to more secular uses.
Nor was this merely a result of the general laxity and indifference of the “dead” period in the Church. There are not wanting signs that in the seventeenth century the standard of discipline among ringers was not high. We may recall how John Bunyan, at one time an enthusiastic member of the ringing company of Elstow, was constrained to abandon the pursuit, along with other enjoyments, as not tending to edification. That conviviality reigned in the belfry in those days is shown by the use of ringers’ jugs, some of which still exist, in which large quantities of beer were provided, and by the frequent entries in parish accounts of money spent on beer for the ringers. One of the bells at Walsgrave, in Warwickshire (dated 1702) has the inscription:
“Hark do you hear?
Our clappers want beer,”
evidently intended for a gentle hint that the ringers suffered from thirst!
“Great John of Beverley.”
A fourteenth-century bell recast by Taylor, with old lettering reproduced. (See pages [49], [116], [155].)