174 



HOROLOGY. 



Bells. 



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on bell 

 founding, 



Oth 10th 



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It is still a point undetermined whether the com- 

 mon shape of the bell, or that which is called the 

 dish-form, and used chiefly in house clocks, is the 

 best. The great expence which attends experiments 

 on bell founding, will probably keep this point long 

 undecided. Being in possession of a manuscript, con- 

 taining some of Professor Ludlam's remarks on the sub- 

 ject of bell founding,* which we conceive to be very 

 valuable, we shall lay them before our readers. " I 

 saw a great deal of the art of bell founding," says Mr 

 Ludlam, " in the time of the late Mr Thomas Eayre 

 of Kettering, a man who had a true taste for it, and 

 spared no expence to make improvements. Much of 

 tone depends on minute circumstances in the shape ; 

 and Mr Eayre had crooks or forms cut on thin boards, 

 carefully taken from the inside and outside of all the 

 good bells he could find. This county (Cambridge) 

 and Northampton abounds with the best bells I ever 

 heard, cast by Hugh Watts of Leicester, between 1630 

 and 1610. Ringers in general, who are commonly 

 constituted the judges of bells, (and as such are feed 

 by the bell founder) regard neither tune nor tone. 

 1 lie hanging of the bell is all they regard, that they 

 may show their dexterity in change-ringing. That 

 hape of a bell that is best for tone, (a short one) is not 

 the best for hanging, so tone is utterly disregarded ; to 

 please the ringers, and to get money, is all. In my 

 opinion, the thinner the bell and deeper the tone the 

 better, provided it is not shelly, that is, like a thin 

 shell, with such a tone as the fragments of a broken 

 Florence-flask will give. A deep tone always suggests 

 the idea of a great bell, is more grave, and better suited 

 to the slow strokes of a church clock, and is heard 

 farther. The clock in St Clement Dane's church in 

 the Strand, London, strikes the hour twice once on 

 the great bell in peal, and again on its octave or 12th, 

 I know not which ; listen to them, and you will per- 

 ceive which is most agreeable and best heard. The 

 son of Mr Thomas Eayre, who was a good bell founder, 

 cast a dish-bell of five or six hundred weight, for the 

 church clock at Boston, in Lincolnshire, the tone of 

 which was very deep and wild. Mr Thomas Eayre, 

 very early in life, made a curious chime for Sir T. 

 Wentworth, afterwards Lord Malton, and father of the 

 Marquis of Rockingham, which had thirteen dish-bells, 

 the biggest about two hundred weight. This is at 

 Harrowden, near Kettering. Thomas Eayre, his son, 

 and his brother Joseph, being all dead, to their bell- 

 founding business one Arnold succeeded, who had 

 worked with Joseph Eayre, and is now at St Neot's, 

 Huntingdonshire. Arnold I believe to be a much bet- 

 ter bell founder than the White Chapel bell founders, 

 though by no means equal to old Thomas Eayre. Ro- 

 milly always would confound Thomas Eayre with Jo- 



seph Eayre, and so imputed the faults of the one to the Brils. 

 other. Romilly was so conceited when at Leicester, ""-V"* 

 where there is undoubtedly the best peal of bells in 

 the kingdom, (partly old Watt's and partly Thomas 

 Eayre's) that he would not so much as deign to hear 

 them. I cannot help thinking that a bell of five or 

 six hundred weight, of the dish form, might be cast 

 far fitter for your purpose, than one of the church form. 

 But who will do it ? Who has had any experience of 

 bells of this form ? It must also be observed, that 

 small differences, in the form, in the shape or thickness 

 of the sound-bole of a church bell, will make great dif- 

 ferences in the tone. All I can say is, it is not the 

 weight of metal, but something resulting from the 

 shape of the bell, that gives both freedom and depth 

 of tone, as I can prove by many instances. What that 

 shape is that makes a bell so willing to speak, is a 

 question which a good bell founder ought to be able to 

 answer. It is a known and undoubted fact, that a 

 bell speaks much better, when both the clapper and 

 the bell is hammer hardened, and when they are work- 

 ed in to touch each other in many points. I now re- 

 recollect, [that above 40 years ago, Thomas Eayre 

 made a large turret clock, with quarters, for Lady E. 

 Germain, (now Lord G. Germain's) at 1 >ray ton, near 

 Thrapton, Northamptonshire, ail the beils of which are 

 Dish-Bells of a large size. I know not their weight ex- 

 actly, but suppose the biggest four hundred weight- 

 they are heard a great way.'' " There is an instrument 

 brought from China, called a gon or ijong, made of 

 hammered brass, or of some sort of a metallic compo- 

 sition, about 1 6 inches over. The drawing is a section 



of it. A _^ ^_ A What I call the sides 



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A A are about four inches deep, and seem to supply the 

 office of the sides of a drum, while the flat part BB 

 answers to the stretched parchment ; only there is a 

 round part in the middle to stiffen it. On this raised 

 part you beat with a ball of packthread of four or five 

 inches diameter, fastened to tho end of a stick. The 

 metal, at a mean, is about one- eighth of an inch thick, 

 but unequal, the whole form being manifestly raised 

 out of a flat plate by the hammer. The tone is ama- 

 zingly deep, clear, and sonorous. The note of that I 

 saw, and had some time in my possession, was F, an 

 octave below the F fa ut cliff in the bass." See our 

 article GONG. 



That music which is produced by clocks with organ Constme- 

 barrels must be greatly preferable to that of bells, tirm of or- 

 and the apparatus for marking the tunes on clock bar- g an clocks. 

 rels is equally suited to do the same on barrels intend- 

 ed by machinery to work or to sound the pipes of an 

 organ ; the difference consisting in marking oft' on the 

 barrel the spaces of the longer and shorter notes, as in 

 place of pins they have staples or bridges of various 

 lengths, according to the length of the note, or the 

 time which the pipe should be allowed to a sound it : The 

 very short notes are by pins of different thicknesses. 

 When an organ part is put to a clock, considerable 

 power or force of weight or spring is required ; small 

 as the organ may be, or its wind-chest, some force is 

 required to work the bellows, so as to keep the wind- 

 chest full and no more. To work the bellows, that is, 

 to move the lower board of them up and down, on the 

 inside of which is an air valve that opens on the board 

 being moved downwards, and on the motion upwards 



* These remarks are contained in a series of unpublished letters written by that eminent Professor, and copies of which are in thflipossej- 

 sion of the writer of this article. See p. 123. col. 2. of this article. 



