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no mention of the Curfew Bell, as to the origin of which the general belief is that it 

 was of Norman origin, in so far as it was William the Conqueror's enactment that 

 all people should put out their fires and lights, and go to bed at the 8 o'clock bell. 

 Nothing is more common in the old record of parish charities than to find bequests 

 of land or money to provide for the ringing of the 8 o'clock or "couvre-feu" bell, and 

 in the parish of Bromyard a curfew bell still rings every evening, for 15 minutes, 

 at eight p.m., from November 6th to Christmas Day, the 6th bell then tolling 

 the date of the month. At Presteign, in Radnorsliire, though in the Diocese of 

 Hereford, and barely across the border, one John Beddoes, in 1565, conveyed 

 premises to feoffees in trust out of the rents, to find an able person to ring a bell 

 in the Parish Church of Presteign every morning for ever, between the Feasts of 

 All Saints and the purification of our Lady, for one half hour, to be called the 

 day bell ; and also nightly for ever to ring one other peal with the same bell at 8 

 o'clock in the afternoon, as well in summer as in winter time, by the space of one 

 half hour, to be called Curfew ; and the testator provided moreover that, should 

 should this ringing be discontinued for one year (unless for the plague or other 

 reasonable cause), the said premises shall revert to his heirs. In Mrs. Dent's 

 charming "Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley," published this summer by Mr. 

 John Murray, we find that the Curfew Bell at Winchcombe (Gloucestershire), is 

 rung for ten minutes every, night from the time of the Autumn Stow Fair until 

 the May Fair in the same place. Here, too, the peal ends with the deliberate 

 tolling of the day of the month. In many other parishes (e.g. Leominster and 

 Kington) this custom has been kept up within living memory, and akin to it, we 

 make no doubt, is the custom of the bell ringing at 8 o'clock at night, which one 

 John Carey left a provision of 10s. per year, to be paid through the mayor and 

 commonalty, to the clerk or sexton of Woodstock ; to be rung nightly for tht guide 

 and direction of travellers. I mention this because I Ijelieve the parish of Aymes- 

 try has (or had) its night bell for the same purpose, and its legend of wanderers 

 guided by it to the village's hospitable shelter. A charity somwhat akin to these 

 is that which appears to have existed at Thruxton, Herefordshire, where an acre 

 of land, called the "Bell-acre," was left towards the buying of bell-ropes annually, 

 and there is a " Bell-close " for the same purpose in the charity lands of Pem- 

 bridge, in this county also. Apropos of bells. Price in his Leominster Guide 

 (p. 127), published 1808, tells us that on Shrove Tuesday in that town a bell used 

 to ring at noon as a signal for the people to begin frying their pancakes ; and if 

 we go just a yard or so into Salop over Ludford Bridge, we might any morning 

 hear the workmen's bell at six in the morning, provided of old by charitable fore- 

 thought, to call the labourer betimes for his day's work. In connection with 

 Ludlow, it would be wrong to omit the mention of an old Shrove-Tuesday 

 custom, which has only fallen into disuse within the last 40 years. I mean the 

 rope-pulling. It was the custom for the Mayor and Corporation every Shrove- 

 Tuesday, to provide a rope three inches in thickness and 36 yards in length, and 

 to give it out from one of the windows of the market-place as the clock struck 

 four, when a large body of the inhabitants, divided into two parties, according 

 to the wards or streets of the borough, commenced a vehement struggle to force 



