Treble Going
“My Grandfather worked on this” Brian White said pointing to our beautiful treble sitting on its test
bed stand in the bell repair workshop in Appleton, Oxfordshire.
“How can you possibly know” we asked. “I can tell just by looking at the workmanship” as he pointed
to a row of copper nails on the rim of the bell wheel. “There” he said “That’s my Grandfather’s work”
So there we were with an instant connection between our Bell and the man standing in front of us
through his Grandfather who had died in 1919.
Six months earlier our Bell had responded to a pull on the bell rope with “a thunk” rather than a clear
note. Examination revealed a small hairline crack on its edge which necessitated a repair.
A Faculty granted by the Diocese and a five month wait later two men from White’s of Appleton came
along to Holy Cross Church Ramsbury to take our Bell away for repair.
A large heavy duty block was placed in the beam above the bells centrally over the round trapdoor in
the floor through which the bells were raised and lowered.
A second pair of blocks were placed laterally either side of the bell. Then by a process of shilly
shallying the Treble bell was lifted upwards out of its mountings and then shuffled across to the
trapdoor and then lowered tenderly, through the clock loft, through the ringing chamber to a pallet
in the Vestry.
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The Treble Bell being lowered into the Ringing Chamber
Tower Captain, Dave Arnold, securing the bell for further lowering into the Vestry.
From there by pallet truck to the Lychgate and then by way of a forklift on the front of a JCB belonging
to a local farmer onto the truck to be driven away.
As an aside it is worthy of note that the JCB driver, Pete Wilson, is now one our bellringers as a result
of that encounter! He had learned to ring at Stanton St. John in Oxfordshire.
The Bell first had to go to Soundweld in Newmarket for specialist welding repair. The Bell had a jacket
fitted over both of the outside and the inside and then slowly heated over a period of three days.
Once it was cherry red hot the welding repair was carried out. A vee is cut out of the bell where the
fracture occurred and back filled with repair metal of the same blend of tin and copper. Then the
surface beading and bars were patched up.
If the bell had not been heated so slowly before it was welded there was a high risk that it would just
crack and rendered useless.
Soundweld is unique in that it is the only business in the UK that has the technology to repair bells in
this way. The business began as a research project at the University of Cambridge in developing a
technology to repair ancient bells. The parties involved realised that there was the potential for a
business there and we must be grateful that they did.
Once the weld had been carried out the Bell went to the White’s workshop in Appleton for turning
and refurbishment.
The workshop is an unassuming set of stone built workshops set round a rectangular courtyard with
the long fourth side being a wall adjacent to the road. Entry is through a tiny insignificant doorway
where you are met by a complete set of miniature bells and their ropes.
Some of the set of miniature bells at Appleton
Moving into the main workshop you are confronted with a large collection of bells in various states
of repair. All had the metal work of their headstocks painted in distinctive “White’s” blue. At the far
end was a blacksmiths furnace and the test bed on which our Bell was standing. The walls were
festooned with chains and old rusty tools and spanners. If you half closed your eyes and filtered out
a modern winch and some welding sets you could be looking at the workshop when it was first set up
in 1824. This thought continues and strengthened as we walked into the woodworking workshop
where I felt sure that some of the benches and tools used to make headstocks and bell wheels had
been there since the very beginning. A time capsule behind an anonymous Cotswold stone wall in
Appleton!
Ancient tools
Traditional woodworking methods for the bell wheels
Bob Osmond, Brian White and David Jackson with the Treble Bell
The business was begun in the early 1800’s by Brian White’s Great Grandfather and apart from a
period in the Second World War when bells fell silent and the workshop was used for machinery repair,
bell have been repaired there ever since.
Brian recalled standing in the courtyard with his uncle pouring kettle after kettle of boiling water on
strips of ash to bend them into shape. Happily those days have done and more modern techniques
are used.
Material have changed too with quality marine plywood being used for the wheel shrouds rather than
increasingly rare pure ash.
But traditional methods remain in operation in many areas simply because they are the best. Having
said that it was weird to sit in Brian’s office and be shown his computer with its CAD design suite for
designing bell layouts and data bases of all the bells in all of the towers in the country. It is a testament
to the business that they have kept the old but incorporated the new in such a harmonious way. As
Brian said, using CAD was much much easier than using a pencil and scale drawings.
I, at least, was astonished to learn that bells had been a part of English society since the 13th century.
Brian could point to a bell that had been struck in 1220. Originally bells were made in sandpits in the
actual churchyard where the bells were to be hung. There developed a plethora of foundries but
nowadays this has reduced to just two, in Whitechapel and Loughborough. A trip to one or other of
these beckons.
We learnt that bells had five “sounds” all of which had be tuned to each other to produce the final
sound. The nominal, the quint, the tierce, the hum and the prime. I won’t pretend to know which is
where but they are areas from the rim to the shoulder of the bell.
Before electronics came to the rescue the Whites had 203 tuning forks that they used in tuning bells.
Tuning was done by very very carefully paring off layers of metal on a lathe until the right sound was
achieved. I say “very very carefully” as the paring process was a one way one. Once a layer had been
removed it could not be replaced and if overdone the bell would have to be recast or all the other
bells retuned to the “overcooked” bell.
Brian told us that that whilst they had a set of 203 tuning forks the set was reduced to 202 because
when they were put on show at Blenheim Palace someone stole one of the larger ones. It would be
very special to retrieve it!
This strange amalgam of the old and traditional and the modern and high tech is intriguing. What I
realized is that bell making, repairing and ringing is an industry that permeates British society right
back almost to its very beginnings and continues to this day. I am staggered to think how many bell
towers I have walked past in my lifetime with absolutely no idea of the history and “ancientness” of
the bells housed within.
How the industry has retained traditions and but adopted technologies and even now how it battles
with planning consents, preservation orders and church faculties which rightly preserve but at times
stand in the way of sensible modifications and modernisations. Brian told us of the issues concerning
bells with decorative canons which were subject to preservation orders. The bells really needed a
more modern mounting but the canons had to be retained.
If British history was a stick of rock then bell ringing would be one of the letters running through the
centre of it! Particularly as bell ringing as practised in England is so unique and known only in the UK
plus South Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and USA. For the rest of the world bells are just
struck or rotated through 360 degrees using a motor and chain.
Naturally, as bellringers, we asked if the White Family rang as well as repaired and sure enough they
did. Around the time that the workshop was set up in the early 19th century the local Lord of the
Manor in Appleton caused uproar by enclosing the village green for the keeping of sheep. As a means
of placating the local populace a set of bells was donated to the parish church. The Whites have rung
those bells ever since. Better still a festival to commemorate to hanging of the bells was initiated.
One of the bells was turned upside down and filled with beer. This was duly drunk with a meal of
Christmas Pudding! This tradition has been maintained ever since and continues to this day. We
were left wondering if we might emulate such a tradition with the help of our local brewery.
Our Bell was returned to us some ten days later having had its headstock refurbished, the bell repaired
and retuned and the outer surface cleaned with “1708”, its year of manufacture clearly showing. The
process was reversed and the bell brought into the vestry and raised on chains through the trapdoors
and into the bell chamber.
“1708” the date of the founding of the Treble Bell
The Treble Bell on its pallet awaiting raising. Note the distinctive “White’s” blue paintwork.
Bellringer Bob Osmond supervising the lifting.
Nearly there! Note the white “repair” on the inside of the bell.
The ringing of our peal of six bells the following Sunday was a day of great celebration.
David Jackson
March 2016