Great bell has been ringing in new year for half a millennium
Ringing in the new year is one of the highlights of the Derby Cathedral ringers’ year. This year, because of the pandemic, they were unable to do so, but the bells were not totally silent when 2021 arrived, as ELIZABETH HEATON recounts.
IT was quiet in the tower of Derby Cathedral this New Year’s Eve.
No one climbing the spiral staircase to the ringing chamber. No quarter peals in the evening to bid farewell to the old year. No festive gathering of ringers, with food and friendship and ringing. No waiting, poised beside ropes, for the moment of midnight. No one ringing 12 strokes on the deep-toned tenor bell, followed by the rest of the bells joining in, the joyful sound of ten bells rolling out into the night air to welcome in the new year.
It was quiet, but not altogether silent. The ringers weren’t there to pull the ropes in their changing sequences, weaving the stately old music of Call Changes, Grandsire, Stedman and the rest.
But the bells were there, and they did their duty as clock chimes. At the signal from the clock, just before midnight the chime mechanism sprang into action, gears turned, wires and cranks rattled, hammers swung. The four bright phrases of the quarter chimes rang out: Queens, Rounds, Tittums, and another that has no name.
Then the tenor bell struck the hour, 12 solemn strokes. Then stillness again, apart from the distant crackle of fireworks.
This was the tenor bell’s 500th new year, or thereabouts. Based on its shape and decoration, it is believed to have been cast around 1520.
It was made at the Seliok bell foundry in Nottingham, by methods very similar to the way bells are cast today. The inner core and outer cope of the mould were clamped together leaving a bellshaped space between them.
The bronze to make the bell (about a ton of it in this case) was heated to more than 1,100C and poured into the mould. It was left to cool for a few days then the mould was removed. Only then would the founders know that their handiwork was sound, without cracks or pores.
There is still some mystery around the early life of this bell. In 1520 they were only halfway through the 20-year project of building the tower of All Saints’ Church, which is now the Cathedral. The parish records don’t say anything about buying a bell at that time, and in any case would they hang it in a tower that was still under construction?
There is a tradition that it first hung at Dale Abbey. Perhaps it came from there to Derby at the dissolution of the monasteries in
1539, but there is nothing about that in the parish records either. Either way it has been at All Saints’ Derby for 480-500 years.
When more bells were added in the ensuing century to make a ring of six, it took its place as the tenor, the deepest toned and heaviest bell, the keynote of the musical scale.
After four more bells were added in 1677 it was the tenor of the ring of ten bells, which are now the oldest surviving ring of ten.
By then English-style change ringing had been invented and the bells had wheels attached so that they could be rung full-circle, turning over from mouth-upward to mouth-upward, in the way that makes change ringing possible.
In 1687 they were re-hung in a new frame by the famous Derby engineer George Sorocold, who also gave Derby its first piped water supply and made improvements to inland waterways, docks, mines, mills and more.
In 1927 All Saints’ became a Cathedral and the bells were rehung in a new steel frame, and the carillon and clock chiming mechanisms were added.
The tenor bell was cast and brought to Derby in the reign of Henry VIII. It was here through the Civil War, the Restoration of the Monarchy, the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie with his army in 1745, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the coming of the railways and coal-fuelled factories, the World Wars, the transforming advent of cars and concrete – all the changes of a thriving town over half a millennium.
Most remarkably of all, it’s not a museum piece. It sings out in the quarter chimes every 15 minutes and it strikes the hours - altogether nearly 400 hammer blows each day. It takes its part in the tunes played three times a day by the carillon.
And after the pandemic, when ringers can gather together once more, the ten bells will ring changes for the Cathedral services, to express celebration or sorrow, and just for the sheer joy of ringing.
Can you think of any other 500-year-old object that is still in daily – even hourly – use?
Acknowledgements: The Church Bells of Derbyshire, by Patricia A M Halls and George A Dawson and Ten Bells by Patricia A M Halls.