And now as to the cracking of bells, and how to prevent it. Bells may crack either at the top, or “crown,” or at the rim, or “sound-bow,” where the clapper strikes. The former is usually due to defective methods of hanging, which cannot be explained without becoming too technical; but the latter comes from a very simple and avoidable cause. Moreover, a bell cracked at the crown does not thereby lose its tone, and may last for years in that condition; but if cracked at the rim it is immediately and hopelessly ruined. If, again, the cannons, or metal loops by which the bell hangs from the wooden stock, should be broken, the bell may be kept sound by boring holes in the crown and bolting it to the stock. But in making this latter suggestion I do not wish to commend—rather to protest against—the practice of modern bell-founders, who do this in all cases, instead of using cannons. They are supported by the ringers, who say it makes the bell swing more easily; but it is a barbarous practice, and destroys the whole appearance of the bell.
Of all dangers which beset our unfortunate bells, by far the worst is the objectionable, but only too common, practice of “clocking,” as it is called. Against this, no protests can be too strong. The reason is a very simple one. “Clocking” consists in tying the clapper to the rope in order to make the bell sound more easily and with little effort on the ringer’s part. Now, this gives the clapper very little play, and it strikes continually on one place at very short intervals. This checks vibration and prevents the effect of the stroke from spreading, and is a sure cause of cracking at the rim sooner or later. Yet all over the country it is constantly being done, and on a recent visit to Essex it was my experience in tower after tower. Worse than that, I found the bells in several cases actually hung “dead,” the stocks being fixed to the frames, so that any swinging was impossible.
“Clocking” is, unfortunately, no new practice, as we hear of it at Reading three hundred years ago; but would that modern churchwardens would take the same view of it that the good Joseph Carter, churchwarden of S. Lawrence and bell-founder, did then. He got the vicar to draft a resolution that, “Whereas there was, through the slothfulness of the sexton in times past, a kind of tolling the bell by the clapper-rope, it was now forbidden and taken away, and that the bell should be tolled as in times past and not in any such idle sort.” In London alone twenty-eight large bells in the principal churches were cracked by “clocking” between 1820 and 1860.
Even the ordinary clock-hammer, striking on the upper side of the rim of the bell, often has the same effect; and for the same reason. But in both cases there is a remedy, if put in hand at once and after consulting a good bell-hanger, namely, that of “quarter-turning,” or turning the bell round through one quarter of its circumference, so that the clapper may strike on a place at right angles to the old one, if that has become worn.
Part of a Seventeenth Century Bell by Henry Oldfield of Nottingham.
The lettering is an imitation of mediaeval types, but the ornament is characteristic of the later period. (See pages [106], [112]).
If, however, a bell has once become hopelessly cracked, there is no remedy but recasting into a new one; though it is said that a cracked bell in Dorset was successfully repaired by a Norwegian artificer about fifteen years ago, and where he has succeeded, others may yet. Nevertheless it is only too common for bells to be re-cast when there is no necessity. Perhaps one bell is broken, or it is desired to increase the number of the bells, and the founder, with a pardonable eye to business, suggests that all the old bells should be melted down, in order to have an entirely new ring, guaranteed in tune with each other. And thus disappears many an interesting and valuable old bell, perfectly sound and well-toned. It does not follow that because a bell is old its tone is inferior to a new one, or that it cannot be fitted into a new ring. Rather, the contrary is the case, and tone improves and mellows with age.