Bell-founding.—The earliest bells were probably not cast, but made of plates riveted together, like the bells of St Gall or Belfast above mentioned. The bell-founder’s art, originally practised in the monasteries, passed gradually into the hands of a professional class, by whom, in England and the Low Countries especially, were gradually worked out the principles of construction, mixture of metals, lines and proportions, now generally accepted as necessary for a good bell. In England some of the early founders were peripatetic artificers, who travelled about the country, setting up a temporary foundry to cast bells wherever they were wanted. Miles Graye (c. 1650), a celebrated East Anglian founder, carried on his work in this fashion, and in old churchwardens’ accounts are sometimes found notices of payment for the casting of bells at places where no regular foundry is known to have existed. The chief centres of the art in medieval times were London, York, Gloucester and Nottingham; and bells by e.g. “John of York” (14th century), Samuel Smith, father and son, of York (1680-1730), Abraham Rudhall and his descendants of Gloucester (1684-1774), Mot (16th century), Lester and Pack (1750), Christopher Hodson of London (who cast “Great Tom” of Oxford, 1681) and Richard Phelps (1716) are still in high repute. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry (now Mears and Stainbank), established by Robert Mot in 1570, incorporated the business of the Rudhalls, Lester and Pack, Phelps, Briant and others, and is now one of the leading firms of bell-founders; others being Warner and Sons of Spitalfields and Taylor & Co., Loughborough, the founders of “Great Paul” for St Paul’s cathedral (1881). Of Dutch and Flemish founders the firms of van den Gheyn (1550), Hemony (1650), Aerschodt & Wagheven at Louvain and others have a great reputation in the Low Countries, especially for “carillons,” such as those at Antwerp or Bruges, a form of bell-music which has not taken much root in England, despite the advocacy of the Rev. H.R. Haweis, who proclaimed its superiority to English change-ringing.
Bell-metal is a mixture of copper and tin in the proportion of 4 to 1. In Henry III.’s reign it was 2 to 1. In Layard’s Nineveh bronze bells, it was 10 to 1. Zinc and lead are used in small bells. The thickness of the bell’s edge is about one-tenth of its diameter, and its height is twelve times its thickness.
Bells, like viols, have been made of every conceivable shape within certain limits. The long narrow bell, the quadrangular, and the mitre-shaped in Europe at least indicate antiquity, and the graceful curved-inwardly-midway and full trumpet-mouthed bell indicates an age not earlier than the 16th century.
The bell is first designed on paper according to the scale of measurement. Then the crook is made, which is a kind of double wooden compass, the legs of which are respectively curved to the shape of the inner and outer sides of the bell, a space of the exact form and thickness of the bell being left betwixt them. The compass is pivoted on a stake driven into the bottom of the casting-pit. A stuffing of brickwork is built round the stake, leaving room for a fire to be lighted inside it. The outside of this stuffing is then padded with fine soft clay, well mixed and bound together with calves’ hair, and the inner leg of the compass run round it, bringing it to the exact shape of the inside of the bell. Upon this core, well smeared with grease, is fashioned the false clay bell, the outside of which is defined by the outer leg of the compass. Inscriptions are now moulded in wax on the outside of the clay-bell; these are carefully smeared with grease, then lightly covered with the finest clay, and then with coarser clay, until a solid mantle is thickened over the outside of the clay bell. A fire is now lighted, and the whole baked hard; the grease and wax inscriptions steam out through holes at the top, leaving the sham clay bell baked hard and tolerably loose, between the core and the cope or mantle. The cope is then lifted, the clay bell broken up, the cope let down again, enclosing now between itself and the core the exact shape of the bell. The metal is then boiled and run molten into the mould. A large bell will take several weeks to cool. When extricated it ought to be scarcely touched and should hardly require tuning. This is called its maiden state, and it used to be so sought after that many bells were left rough and out of tune in order to claim it.
Bell Tones and Tuning.—A good bell, fairly struck, should give out three distinct notes—a “fundamental” note or “tonic”; the octave above, or “nominal”; and the octave below, or “hum-note.” (It also gives out the “third” and “fifth” above the fundamental; but of these it is less necessary to take notice.) Very few bells, however, have any two of these notes, and hardly any all three, in unison—the “hum-notes” being generally a little sharper, and the “fundamentals” a little flatter, than their respective “nominals.” In tuning a “ring” or series of bells, the practice of founders has hitherto been to take one set of notes (in England usually the nominals, on the continent the fundamentals) and put these into tune, leaving the other tones to take care of themselves. But in different circumstances different tones assert themselves. Thus, when bells are struck at considerable intervals, the fundamental notes being fuller and more persistent are more prominent; but when struck in rapid succession (as in English change-ringing or with the higher bells of a Belgian “carillon,” which take the “air”) the higher tone of the “nominal” is more perceptible. The inharmonious character of many Belgian carillons, and of certain Belgian and French rings in England, is ascribed by Canon A.B. Simpson (in his pamphlet, Why Bells sound out of Tune, 1897) to neglect of the “nominals,” the fundamentals only being tuned to each other. To tune a series of bells properly, the fundamental tone of each bell must be brought into true octave with its nominal, and the whole series of bells, thus rectified, put into tune with each other. The “hum-note” of each, which is the tone of the whole mass of metal, should also be in tune with the others. If flatter than the nominal, it cannot be sharpened; but if sharper (as is more usual), it may be flattened by thinning the metal near the crown of the bell. The great bell (“Great Paul”) cast by Messrs Taylor for St Paul’s cathedral, London, has all its tones in true harmony, except that the tone next above the fundamental (E♭) is a “fourth” (A♭) instead of a “third” (G or G♭). The great bell cast by the same founders for Beverley Minster is in perfect tune; and with the improved machinery now in use, there is no reason why this should not henceforth be the case with all church bells.
The quality of a bell depends not only on the casting and the fineness and mixture of metals, but upon the due proportion of metal to the calibre of the bell. The larger the bell the lower the tone; but if we try to make a large E bell with metal only enough for a smaller F bell, the E bell will be puny and poor. It has been calculated that for a peal of bells to give the pure chord of the ground tone or key-note, third, fifth and octave, the diameters are required to be as thirty, twenty-four, twenty, fifteen, and the weights as eighty, forty-one, twenty-four and ten.
History and Uses of Bells.—The history of bells is full of romantic interest. In civilized times they have been intimately associated, not only with all kinds of religious and social uses, but with almost every important historical event. Their influence upon architecture is not less remarkable, for to them indirectly we probably owe most of the famous towers in the world. Church towers at first, perhaps, scarcely rose above the roof, being intended as lanterns for the admission of light, and addition to their height was in all likelihood suggested by the more common use of bells.
Bells early summoned soldiers to arms, as well as Christians to church. They sounded the alarm in fire or tumult; and the rights of the burghers in their bells were jealously guarded. Thus the chief bell in the cathedral often belonged to the town, not to the cathedral chapter. The curfew, the Carolus and St Mary’s bell in the Antwerp tower all belong to the town; the rest are the property of the chapter. He who commanded the bell commanded the town; for by that sound, at a moment’s notice, he could rally and concentrate his adherents. Hence a conqueror commonly acknowledged the political importance of bells by melting them down; and the cannon of the conquered was in turn melted up to supply the garrison with bells to be used in the suppression of revolts. Many a bloody chapter in history has been rung in and out by bells.
On the third day of Easter 1282, at the ringing of the Sicilian vespers (which have given their name to the affair), 8000 French were massacred in cold blood by John of Procida, who had thus planned to free Sicily from Charles of Anjou. On the 24th of August, St Bartholomew’s day, 1571, bells ushered in the massacre of the Huguenots in France, to the number, it is said, of 100,000. Bells have rung alike over slaughtered and ransomed cities; and far and wide throughout Europe in the hour of victory or irreparable loss. At the news of Nelson’s triumph and death at Trafalgar, the bells of Chester rang a merry peal alternated with one deep toll, and similar incidents could be multiplied.
There are many old customs connected with the use of church bells, some of which have died out, while others remain here and there. The best known and perhaps oldest of these is the “Curfew” (couvre-feu), first enforced (though not perhaps introduced) by William the Conqueror in England as a signal for all lights and fires to be extinguished at 8 P.M.—probably to prevent nocturnal gatherings of disaffected subjects. In many towns it survived into the 19th century as a signal for closing shops at 8 or 9; and it is still kept up in various places as an old custom; thus at Oxford the familiar boom of “Tom’s” 101 strokes is still the signal for closing college gates at 9. The largest and heaviest bells were used for the Curfew, to carry the sound as far as possible, as it did to Milton’s ear, suggesting the descriptive lines in Il Penseroso (74-75):—