Operation Muffle
Leatherworkers f looded with orders so that church bells can be muted in mark of respect when the Queen dies
BRITAIN’S leatherworkers are being mobilised in preparation for the passing of the Queen – to make more muffles for church bells.
On the days of Her Majesty’s death and funeral, an hour’s muted chimes will ring out as part of Operation London Bridge – the code name for protocols following the Monarch’s demise.
Most of Britain’s 16,000 churches have not rung bells fully muffled – which turns the familiar peal into a dull-sounding hum – since the death of the Queen’s father, King George VI, in February 1952.
Many muffles have rotted after being kept in church towers for decades and now, following a request for churches to mute bells
to mourn the Queen’s death, Britain’s small leatherworking industry has been flooded with orders.
Central Council of Church Bell Ringers spokeswoman Vicki Chapman said: ‘We have spent a lot of time talking to the Royal Household and Lambeth Palace about the day the Monarch passes, which we hope will not be any time soon.
‘Adding muffles makes bells sound mournful, more like a hum – so they will sound like thud, thud, thud rather than dong, dong, dong.
‘It is about paying due reverence to the service of the Monarch and commemorating her life.’
Philip Pratt of Big Wilf’s Bell Muffles near Bristol, which has supplied more than 1,000 churches, said: ‘A lot of enquiries are coming in and we are taking on more and more orders.
‘Muffles are a specialist product and only a very few leather manufacturers in the UK make them.’ Simon Adams of muffle retailer John Taylor Bell Foundry in Loughborough said: ‘Sales in the past month are double the previous month.’
Full muffles, which dampen the sound of both strokes of a bell’s clapper – the metal part inside the bell that creates the noise – are reserved for the Monarch’s death.
Bells are sometimes rung halfmuffled with one stroke muted for Remembrance Sunday and funerals. A church with six bells would need 12 muffles, at a cost of about £45 each.
Chris Woodcock, Lincoln’s civic ringing master, said: ‘The majority of churches are rushing around trying to get enough of them.’