A new service bell was installed in the tower of St Giles-in-the-Fields on 18 February, dedicated to the memory of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Here Thomas Hardin offers some background on the new bell.
The Elizabeth Bell was cast in 2024 by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough. Bells are measured in imperial measures: hundredweights (cwt), quarters (qtr) and pounds (lb). Our new bell weighs 3-3-4 or 424 pounds and is tuned to E. It is a service bell – the solitary bell that chimes before worship to call people to church. As such, it is hung for electronically operated swing chiming, where the bell rocks back and forth just enough that the clapper hits the side to ring out. By ecclesiastical law (Canon F8), each church should have a bell to be rung to call people to service. The Elizabeth Bell will now serve this purpose.
Whilst there is much description of other instruments and music in the bible, there is only a single mention of bells in scripture: Exodus 28: 31-35. This is the description of the priestly garments that Aaron should wear when going into the temple. At St Giles, our reredos in the chancel (the boards with paintings and text behind the altar) include the traditional depictions of Aaron and Moses. Aaron’s robes match the biblical description with a hem of pomegranates and bells. Exodus tells us the purpose of these bells on his garment are so he can be heard “going into the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out”. Quite fitting then that we still use bells to call the congregation to worship!
The Elizabeth Bell joins the eight other bells already in our tower. These bells were cast between 1635 and 1736 and are hung for change-ringing. The lightest of these (treble bell) weighs 4-2-12 and the heaviest (tenor bell) weighs 14-0-16 (1584 lbs.). These 8 bells are tuned as an octave in F. These bells are mounted into wooden wheels, with each bell individually rung by a separate ringer by rope. This allows the speed of the bell to be precisely controlled to ring the complex patterns by a band of change ringers. The bells were overhauled in 2006 but still ring in their historic timber frame.
You may have seen from the photos of raising the Elizabeth Bell that the inside is bright and shiny, and the outside is dull. Bells are cast from a special bronze alloy that gives them the strength and resonance to produce a beautiful sound whilst swinging and being hit by a clapper. The bell is cast into a mould made of sand, clay, dung, and hair. Into this mould the inscription is stamped, and this is all coated with graphite to act as a mould release. Thus the bell when it arrived for installation is still covered in traces of this graphite. The inner surface by contrast is gleaming, due to the tuning process. Originally, bells were tuned with a rudimentary process called chip tuning, where nicks were made into the rim of the bell to remove metal and bring it to the desired pitch. Now, bells are mounted upside down on a lathe and metal is scraped away from the inner surface to achieve a precise profile, not only of the dominant pitch but also of the complex harmonics and overtones characteristics of the instrument.