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(J5SH
iftogal Xnatitutum of (&mt Britain.
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING,
Friday, March 6, 1857.
Sir Charles Fellows, Vice-President, in the Chair.
/’
Edmund Beckett Denison, M.A. Esq. Q.C. M.R.I.
-
On the Great Bell of Westminster.
I wish it to be understood that I have nothing that can be called
a scientific theory of bell-founding to propound. I do not even
profess to give the reasons why any particular form of bell is better
than others ; nor have I been able to find any one, among the best
mathematicians of my acquaintance, who knows how to deal with
the question mathematically. I have no doubt that the longestablished form of church bells was arrived at gradually by suc
cessive deviations from some much simpler form, such as the hemi
spherical, or hemispheroidal, or conical; especially as bells of these
forms; and of uniform thickness, always strike every body at first
as very superior to the common bell, by reason of their having a
deeper and more imposing tone at a short distance.
Neither have I anything to say of the history of bells. The
only part of their history that I am concerned with is, that in old
times people knew how to make bells of a full, rich, and sweet
sound ; and that the art of making such bells has been sinking
lower and lower, until we have seen no less than three peals in
succession made by two of the only three makers of large bells in
England for the Royal Exchange, and the chimes not yet allowed
to play, because a perfect peal has not yet been produced. At
the same time, it must not be supposed that all old bells are
superior to all modern ones. It would be difficult to find a worse
bell of any age than Great Tom of Oxford, which was cast nearly
two centuries ago, and might be recast into a more powerful bell,
with the weight so much reduced as to pay its own expenses; and
I have seen much smaller bells of the same age as the Oxford
bell, as unsoundly cast as the second peal at the Exchange, in
which some of the bells were full of holes, distinctly visible on the
surface.
And further, I wish to observe that we have nothing to do at
present with any question of musical notes, inasmuch as the subject
�2
Mt. E. Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
is not the making of a peal of bells, which must of course be in
tune with each other, but a single bell, which would have answered
its purpose just as well with any other note as the E natural, which
it happens to sound. I do not mean to say that it was not ascer
tainable beforehand that it would be of this note, as soon as the
shape, size, and thickness were determined; and it is very con
venient that it should be some note exactly, according to the pitch
now accepted among musicians, because a bell is the most per
manent of all musical instruments ; and so long as this bell lives
there will be no room for dispute about what was the accepted
musical standard in England in the middle of the nineteenth cen
tury, assuming some record to be kept that this bell was then E
natural exactly. But the problem we had to solve in making this
first and largest of the five clock bells was, not to produce a bell of
any given note, but to make the best bell that can be made of the
given weight of 14- tons, which had been fixed long ago as the
intended weight. When I say the best bell that can be made, I
mean a combination of the most powerful and most pleasing sound
that can be got—not, observe, the deepest; for we could get any
depth of note we liked out of the given weight, by merely making
the bell thinner, larger, and worse, as I shall explain further
presently.
All that I have to do, therefore, is to describe the observations and
experiments which led me to adopt the particular form and com
position which have been used for this the largest bell that has ever
been cast in England. The result is, undoubtedly, a bell which
gives a sound of a different quality and strength from any of the
other great bells in England. Of course it is very easy to say, as
some persons have said, that we have got a clapper so much larger
than usual, in proportion to the bell, that the sound must needs be
different. But the reply to that is equally easy : the bellfounders
always make the clapper at their own discretion ; and in order to
make the most they can of their bells, you may be sure they will
make the clapper either* as large as they dare, with regard to the
strength of the bell, or as large as they find it of any use to make
it; because there is always a limit, beyond which you can get
no more sound of a bell by increasing the clapper. In the West
minster bell we found that we could go on increasing the sound by
increasing the clapper up to 13 cwt., or say 12 cwt., excluding the
shank or handle of the clapper, or about -g’^th of the weight of the
bell; which is somewhat higher than the proportion found to hold
in some of the great Continental bells ; but two or three times as
high as the usual English proportion. And if the makers of the
other large bells in England have found it either useless or unsafe
to put clappers into them of more than -^th, T^th, or ^th of their
weight, it certainly is not surprising that the sound of this bell
should be so different from theirs, as it is observed to be. The
truth is, that the difference in the size of the clapper is the con-
�1857.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
3
sequence of the bell having a much greater power both of bearing
blows and of giving out sound than usual; and if we knew nothing
more about the matter than that there is one large bell in England
which will advantageously bear a clapper twice as heavy in pro
portion as any other, it would be enough to show that there must
be some essential difference between the constitution of that and
other bells, which is worth investigating.
The art of bellfounding having sunk so low, as is indicated by
what has taken place at the Royal Exchange, and by the great bell
of York being not used at all, after having cost £2000, except
having the hour struck upon it by hand once a-day, it was obviously
necessary to begin at the beginning, as we may say, and take
nothing for granted as proper to be adopted, merely because we
find it in common use now. Accordingly, when I undertook the
responsibility of determining the size, and shape, and composition of
these five bells, the bellfounders having refused to take any
responsibility beyond that of sound casting according to orders, the
Chief Commissioner of Works authorised the making of such
experiments as might be required before finally determining the
design and composition of the bells. Those experiments have
only cost about £100, a small sum compared with the value of this
one bell, and quite insignificant compared with the importance of
success or failure in a national work of this kind. I may observe
also, that there is no reason to believe that the art of making large
bells is at present in a more flourishing state abroad than here.
All the foreign bells in the Great Exhibition of 1851 were bad.
Sir Charles Barry and Professor Wheatstone were requested by
the Board of Works to make inquiries on the subject at the
Paris Exhibition in 1855 ; and it appears that there is no foreign
bellfounder who has cast any bell above a quarter of the weight of
the Westminster bell ; and the proportions of copper and tin which
were stated to be used by the one who has the highest reputation,
M. Hildebrand, of Paris, differ from those which I am satisfied are
the best, both from the analysis of old bells of great celebrity and
from my own experiments. I am equally convinced, that the
French shape of bells is not only not the best, but is not so good as
what may be regarded as the standard English shape.
I have said already that you may get any depth of note out of
a bell of any weight by making it thin enough. At first, everybody
who hears a bell, like that which stood at the west end of the Exhi
bition of 1851, sounding with 29 cwt. very nearly the same note as
our 16 ton bell, is ready to pronounce the common form of bell,
with a sound bow of y^th or y^-th of its diameter, a very absurd
waste of metal. But did it ever occur to them to consider, how far
they could hear that 29 cwt. hemispherical bell ? It could not be
heard as far as a common bell of 2 or 3 cwt.; and before you get
to any great distance from a bell of that kind, the sound becomes
thin and poor, and what we call in bell-founding language, potty.
b 2
�4
Mr. E. Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
Up to 7 or 8 inches, these bells do very well for house clocks, to be
heard at a little distance ; but nothing, in my opinion, can be worse
than the bells of this shape, 2 or 3 feet in diameter, which people
seem to be so fond of buying for the new fashioned cemeteries:
whether from ignorance that they will sound very differently on the
top of a chapel and in the bellfounder’s shop, or because they
think a melancholy and unpleasant sound appropriate, or because
they want to buy their noise as cheap as possible, I do not pretend
to say. These bells, and thin bells of any shape, bear the same
kind of relation to thick ones, as the spiral striking wires of the
American clocks bear to the common hemispherical clock bells;
i.e. they have a deeper but a weaker sound, and, are only fit to
be heard very near. A gong is another instrument in which a deep
note, and a very loud noise at a small distance, may be got with a
small weight of metal; but it is quite unfit for a clock to strike
upon, not merely from the character of its sound, but because it
can only be roused into full vibration by an accumulation of soft
blows. Gongs are made of malleable bell-metal, about 4 of copper
to 1 of tin, which is malleable when cooled suddenly.
The Chinese bells, some of which are very large, may be con
sidered the next approximation towards the established form ; for
they are (speaking roughly) a prolate hemispheroid, but with the
lip thickened; whereby the sound is made higher in pitch but
stronger, and better adapted for sounding at a distance when struck
with a heavy enough hammer. But still the shape of the Chinese
bells is very bad for producing sound of a pleasing quality; and
generally it may be said, at least I have thought so ever since I
began bell-ringing twenty-four years ago, that all bells of which
the slant side is not hollowed out considerably, are deficient in
musical tone. The Chinese bells are not concave but convex in
the slant side. None of the European bells are so bad as that;
but all the French bells that I have seen, or seen pictures of, and
the great bell of St. Peter’s at Rome, of which a model is exhibited,
are straighter in the side than ours. According to my observa
tion, no bell is likely to be a good one unless you could put a stick
as thick as ^th of the diameter between the side or waist of the
bell and a straight edge laid against the top and the bottom. There
was a very marked difference between two of our experimental
bells, which were alike in all other respects, except that one
was straighter in the waist than the other, and that was decidedly
the worst. This condition is generally satisfied by the English
bells : indeed I think the fault of their shape is rather the contrary,
and that they open out the mouth too much, as if the bell had been
jumped down on a great anvil while it was soft, and so the mouth
spread suddenly outwards. The shape which we adopted, after
various experiments in both directions, is something between the
shape of the great bell of Notre Dame, at Paris, (of which a
figured section was sent over last year by the present architect
�1857.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
5
of the Cathedral,) and that of the great bell of Bow, which is
probably much the same as that of St. Paul’s, York, and Lincoln,
as they all came from the same foundry in Whitechapel. Indeed,
the sound-bow of this bell is fuller outside than the Paris bell,
because it is thicker; so much so, that a straight edge laid exter
nally against the top of the bell and the sound-bow would be thrown
out beyond the lip; whereas generally such a straight line would
touch the lip, and just clear the sound-bow. Only within the last
few days I have found one other remarkable exception to this
general rule of construction, and a remarkable coincidence with the
external shape, and the proportions of height, breadth, and thick
ness of our bell, and that is no other than the great bell of Moscow,
of which an exact section is given in Lyall’s Russia, with various
different versions of its weight. The inside shape, however, is not
the same, and I am satisfied not so good, the curve being discon
tinuous, and presenting an angle just below where the clapper
strikes, as in the Paris bell. That bell seems to have had a very
short life, a large piece having been broken out in a fire the year
after it was cast. Sir Roderick Murchison tells me that the sound
of the Russian bells is remarkably sweet.
I cannot find that the exact height of a bell makes much differ
ence. The foreign bells, except the Russian ones, it seems, are
generally higher than ours, being nearly fth of their diameter high,
whether you measure it vertically inside, or obliquely outside from
the lip to the top corner, as the two measures are generally much
alike on account of the curvature of the top or crown. Ours run
from |rd to fth of the diameter, though there are some higher;
and on the whole my impression is against the high ones. The
vertical height inside of all these bells at Westminster is 41 of the
diameter. Lower than that, the bell does not look well; and I
never saw an ugly bell that was a good one; and it is clear from
all our experiments, that the upper or nearly cylindrical part is
of considerable importance, and though its vibrations are hardly
sensible, it cannot even be reduced in thickness without injury to
the sound, of which we had a curious proof. A bell of the usual
proportions, in which the thickness of the upper or thin part is onethird of the sound bow or thickest part, sounds a third or a fourth
above the proper note when it is struck in the waist, and the sound
there is generally harsh and unmusical besides. It occurred to both
my colleague, the Rev.W. Taylor, and myself, that it would be better
to make the waist thinner, so as to give the same note as the sound
bow. After two or three trials we succeeded in doing this very
nearly, and without reducing the waist below Jth instead of 4rd of
the sound bow. The bell sounded very freely with a light blow,
and kept the sound a long time, and a blow on the waist gave a
much better sound than usual. But for all that, when we tried it
at a distance with another bell of the same size and same thickness
of sound bow, but a thicker waist, the thin one was manifestly the
�6
Jfr. E Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
worst, and had a peculiar unsteadiness of tone, and sounded more
of what they call the harmonics along with the fundamental note,
instead of less, as we expected.
But still we have to ascertain what should be the thickness of
the sound-bow itself (which is often called for shortness the thick
ness of the bell). The large bells of a peal are sometimes made
as thin as ^th of the diameter, and by one of the modern bell
founders even thinner, and the small ones as thick as ^th of the
diameter. It is clear that the most effective proportion is from
to T^-. In casting peals of bells it is necessary to take rather a
wider range, in order to prevent the treble being so small and weak
as to be overpowered by the tenor; though here I am convinced
that the modern bellfounders run into the opposite error, and
always make their large bells too thin. I know several peals in
London in which the large bells are hardly heard when they are all
rung, and are besides very inferior in quality to the others. Again,
if you make the small bells too thick, for the purpose of getting a
larger bell to sound the proper note, you approach the state in
which the bell is a lump of metal too thick to have any musical
vibration. This is a much less common fault than the other, because
the nearly universal demand for as deep notes as can be got for the
money is a strong temptation to make the thickest bells, i.e. the
small ones, only just thick enough, and the large ones much too
thin. Nothing can be more absurd than to spend from £300 to
£800 on a peal of bells, which are merely got for the purpose of
giving pleasure to those who hear them, and then insisting on their
being made in a key which they cannot reach without being thin
and bad and disagreeable. People evidently fancy they are getting
more for their money by getting bells in a low key than a high one,
whereas they are really getting less, inasmuch as they only get the
same quantity of metal and have it spent in producing a bad article
instead of a good one. The tenor of the new (third) peal at the
Exchange is only 33 cwt., and sounds the same note, C, as that of
Bow Church, which weighs 53 cwt. It is very evident that one of
them must be wrong: you need only go and hear one strike eleven
and the other twelve, and you will not have much doubt which it
is. It is true that the tenor of the previous (second) peal at the
Exchange, though still worse, was of the same weight, and as the
founders alleged in their own defence, from the same patterns as
Bow ; but the bells must have been of bad metal, and some of them
were certainly bad castings. The thickness of the Westminster
bell was designed, to be -^=-th of the diameter, or 9 inches, which
would have made it 14 tons, the weight which was prescribed for it
twelve or thirteen years ago, long before I had anything to do with
the bells or the dock. By some mistake in setting out the pattern,
or making the mould, which the founders have never been able to
account for, the bell was made 9| inches thick, which is very nearly
T’?th of the diameter, 9 ft. oi in., and which increased the weight to
�1'857.1
on the Great Bell of Westminster,
7
*16 tons, within 174 lbs., and raised the note from E flat to E.
Fortunately the same ratio of increase was made throughout, and
the waist is 3| in., or one-third of the sound-bow, as it ought to
be; and therefore the only effect of the mistake is, that the bell is
heavier and more powerful; for it being cast the first, the alteration
of the note did not signify, as the four quarter bells can as easily
be made to accord with E natural as with E flat. And as they
will be rather smaller in consequence, the aggregate weight of the
whole five will be about 24 tons, as I originally estimated. I have
only to add, with reference to this part of the subject, that the width
of the bell at the top inside is half the width at the mouth, as it
generally is; though in some bells, for instance, the great clock
bell at Exeter, it is the outside diameter that is made half the
diameter at the mouth. It is of no use to state here the precise
geometrical rules by which the pattern of a bell of what we now
call the Westminster pattern is drawn, as they are purely empirical.
I mean, that having got a bell, by trial, which we all agreed was
better than any other, I made out some sufficiently simple rules
for drawing the figure of its section by means of a few circles
whose radii are all some definite numbers of 24th parts of the
diameter of the bell: but there is no kind of a priori reason^ that
I know of, why a bell whose section or sweep is made of those
particular curves, should be better than any other; and therefore I
call the rules for tracing the curve merely empirical; and as they
would be of no use to any one but bellfounders, who know them
already, or easily may, if they like, I shall say no more on this part
of the subject.
As I have been asked many questions about the mode of
calculating the size of a bell, so as to produce a particular note, and
the answer is very simple, I may as well give it, though it may be
found already, with other information on this subject, in the only
English book I know of which contains such information, I mean
the second edition of my Lectures on Church Building, to which a
chapter on bells is added. If you make eight bells, of any shape
and material, provided they are all of the same, and their sections
exactly similar figures (in the mathematical sense of the word),
they will sound the eight notes of the diatonic scale, if all their
dimensions are in these proportions—60, 53-^, 48,45, 40,36, 32, 30 ;
which are merely convenient figures for representing, with only one
fraction, the inverse proportions of the times of vibration belonging
to the eight notes of the scale. And so, if you want to make a
bell, a fifth above a given one—for instance, the B bell to our E, it
must be -|rd of the size in every dimension, unless you mean to vary
the proportion of thickness to diameter ; for the same rule then no
longer holds, as a thinner bell will give the same note with a less
diameter. The reason is, that, according to the general law of
vibrating plates or springs, the time of vibration of similar bells
varies as
When the bells’are also completely similar
�8
&
Mr. E. Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
solids, the thickness itself varies as the diameter, and then the time
of vibration may be said simply to vary inversely as the diameter.
But for a recent letter in the Tinies from a Doctor of Music, who
seems to have taken this bell under his special protection, it would
have seemed superfluous to add that the size of the “ column of air
contained within a bell ” has no more to do with its note, than the
quantity of air in an American clock has to do with the note of the
wire on which it strikes. You may have half a dozen bells of
different notes, because of different thicknesses, all enclosing exactly
the same body of air. I certainly agree with the opinion published
by some of the bellfounders on a former occasion, that musicians
are by no means necessarily the best judges of bells, except as to
the single point of their being in tune with each other.
The weights of bells of similar figures of course vary as the
cubes of their diameters, and may be nearly enough represented
by these numbers—216, 152, 110, 91, 64, 46, .33, 27. But as
we are now only concerned with the making of a single bell, I
shall say no more on this point, beyond desiring you to remember
that the exact tune of a set.of bells, a%they come out of the
moulds, is quite la secondary consideration to their tone or quality
of sound, because the notes can bg altered a little either way by
cutting, but the quality of the tone will remain the same for ever ;
exfeept that it gets louder for the first two or three years that the
bell is used, probably from the particles arranging themselves more
completely in a crystalline order under the hammering, as is well
known to take place even in wrought iron.
We may now consider the composition of bell-metal. It is so
well known to consist generally of from 5 to 3 of copper to 1 of tin,
that all the alloys of that kind are technically called bell-metal,
whatever purpose they may be used for; just as the softer alloys of
8 or 10 to 1 are called gun-metal; and the harder and more brittle
alloy of 2 to 1 is called speculum-metal. But you may wish to
know whether it has been clearly ascertained that there is no other
metal or alloy which would answer better, or equally well and
cheaper. The only ones that have been suggested are aluminium,
either pure or alloyed with copper; cast steel, the iron and tin
alloy, called union-metal; and perhaps we may add, glass. The
first is, of course, out of the question at present, as it is about 50
times as dear as copper, even reckoning by bulk, and much more
by weight. I have not heard any large steel bells myself, but I
have met with scarcely anybody who has, and does not condemn
them as harsh and disagreeable, and having in fact nothing to re
commend them except their cheapness; and as I said before,
nothing can be more absurd than to spend money in buying cheap
and bad luxuries. Much the same may be said of the iron and tin
alloy, called union metal, of which there was a large bell in the
Exhibition of 1851. It was said by Mr. Stirling, the patentee of
that manufacture (though I understand the same alloy is described
�18$?.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
9
by Rinmann, in 1784), that it did not answer to make bells of it
with the sound-bow thicker than the waist, as usual; and if such
bells are worse than the thin ones of that composition, I can only
say they must be very bad indeed. I have seen also some cheap
bells, evidently composed chiefly of iron, but I do not know what
else, and they are much worse than the union metal bells. It is
hardly necessary to say much of glass, because its brittleness is
enough to disqualify it for use in bells ; but besides that, the sound
is very weak, compared with a bell-metal bell of the same size, or
even the same weight, and of course much smaller.
There is another metal, which you will probably expect me to<
notice as a desirable ingredient in bells, that is silver. All that I
have to say of it is, that it is a purely poetical and not a chemical
ingredient of any known bell-metal; and that there is no founda
tion whatever for the vulgar notion that it was used in old bells,
nor the least reason to believe that it would do any good. I hap
pened to hear of an instance where it had been tried by a gentleman
who had put his own silver into the pot at the bellfoundry, some
years ago. I wrote to him to .inquire,about it, and he could not
say that he remembered any particular effect. This seemed to me
quite enough to settle that question. You may easily see for your
selves that a silver cup makes a rather worse bell than a cast-iron ’
saucepan.
Dr. Percy, who has taken great interest in this' subject, has cast
several other small bells, by way of trying the effect of different
alloys, besides the iron and tin just now mentioned. Here is one of
iron 95, and antimony 5. The effect is not very diSerent from
that of iron and tin of the same proportions, and clearly not so
good as copper and tin; and I should mention that antimony ig*
generally considered to produce an analogous effect to tin in alloys,
but always to the detriment of the metal in point of tenacity and
strength. Again, here is a bell of a very singular composition,
copper 88*65, and phosphorus 11*35. It makes a very hard
compound, and capable of a fine polish, but more brittle than bell
metal, and inferior in sound even to the iron alloys. Copper
90’14, and aluminium 9*86, which makes the aluminium bear
about the same proportion in bulk as the tin usually does, seemed
much more promising.
The alloy exceeds any bell-metal in
strength and toughness, and polishes like gold; and as was
mentioned in the lecture here on aluminium last year, it is
superior to everything except gold and platinum in its resistance
to the tarnishing effects of the air. This alloy would probably
be an excellent material for watch wheels, the reeds of organ
pipes, and a multitude of other things for which brass is now
used—a far weaker and more easily corroded metal, but as yet
much cheaper. But for all this, it will not stand for a moment
against the old copper and tin alloy for bells; in fact, it is clearly
the worst of all that we have yet tried. Here is also a brass
�10
Mr. E. Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
model for casting bells, which is of course a brass bell itself, and
that is better than the phosphorus and aluminium alloys, though
inferior to bell-metal. (These were all exhibited.)
So much for the compound metals that have been tried as a
substitute for bell-metal. But we have now, through the kindness of
M. Ste. Claire Deville, of Paris, who exhibited the mode of making
aluminium here last year, the opportunity of realizing the anticipation
then formed, from the sonorousness of a bar of aluminium hung by a
string, and struck. He has taken great pains in casting a bell of
this metal, from a drawing of our Westminster bell, reduced to six
inches diameter. He has also turned the surface, which improves
the sound of small bells, where the small unevennesses of casting
bear a sensible proportion to the thickness of the metal, and in fact,
has done everything to produce as perfect an aluminium bell as
possible, though at its present price it can hardly be regarded as
more than a curiosity. But now for the great question of its sound.
1 am afraid [ringing it] that it must be pronounced to exceed all
the others in badness, as much as it does in cost. I cannot say I
am much surprised ; indeed you may see in the book I have referred
to, that I did not expect it to be successful as a bell, any more than
silver, merely because a bar of it will ring. But it was well worth
while to try the experiment and settle it.
Still the question remains, what are the best proportions for
the copper and tin alloy, which we are now quite sure, in some
proportions, will give the strongest, clearest, and best sound
possible? They have varied from something less than 3 to
something more than 4 of copper to I of tin, even disregarding the
bad bells of modern times, some of which contain no more than 10
per cent, of tin instead of from -1-th to Jth, and no less than 10 per
cent, of zinc, lead, and iron adulteration, as you may see in Ure’s
Dictionary, and other books. Without going through the details of
the various experiments, it will be sufficient to say that we found by
trial, what seemed probable enough before trial, that the best metal
for this purpose is that which has the highest specific gravity of all
the mixtures of copper and tin. It is clear, however, that the copper
now smelted will not carry so much tin as the old copper did with
out making the alloy too brittle to be safely used. You will see
from the table of analyses, which I shall give presently, that the
Westminster bell contains less tin and antimony together, and
more copper than the old bells of York Minster, and a great deal
less tin in proportion to the copper than the famous bell of Rouen,
which was broken up and melted into cannon in the first French
revolution, and of which it is worth while to mention that it appears
to have been commonly called the silver bell, though the analysis
shows it had not a trace of silver in it. We found that the 3 to 1
alloy, even melted twice over, had a conchoidal fracture like glass,
and was very much more brittle than 22 to 7 twice melted, or 7 to
2 once melted ; and accordingly, the metal used for the Westminster
�1857.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
11
bells is 22 to 7 twice melted; or, reducing it for convenience of
comparison to a percentage, the tin is 24’1 of the alloy (not of the
copper), and the copper 75’86, which you see is very nearly the
same as the result of the analysis of the bell when cast. This may
seem extraordinary, because it is well known that the tin wastes
more in melting than the copper ; but no doubt the explanation of
it is, that the antimony which comes out with the tin in the analysis
goes in with the copper in the composition, unless special means are
taken to eliminate it, which is not worth while, as antimony pro
duces the same kind of effect as the tin, and a little of it does no
harm ; as we know from intentionally putting some into a small bell,
though it is an inferior metal to tin both for bells and organ pipes,
in which I understand it is frequently substituted to stiffen the lead,
because the English organ builders will not use as much tin as the
old ones did, and the German ones still do.
This 22 to 7 mixture, or even 3| to 1, which is probably the
best proportion to use for bells made at one melting, is a much
“ higher ” metal, as they call it, than the modern bellfounders,
either English or French, generally use. As there is no great dif
ference in the price of the two metals, the reason why they prefer
the lower quantity of tin is, that it makes the bells softer, and
therefore easier to cut for tuning, which is obviously a very insuffi
cient reason. I advise everybody who makes a contract for bells,
to stipulate that they shall be rejected if they are found on analysis
to contain less than 22, or at any rate 21 per cent, of tin, or more
than 2 per cent, of anything but copper and tin.
Analysis of several Bell-metals.
Copper
. . . 71’
Tin(withAntimony) 26 •
1’2
Iron ....
1*8
Zinc ....
Lead ....
Nickel
. . .
••
Specific gravity . |
724
24’2
••
1•4
••
York.
Lincoln.
Old Peal.
Rouen. Gisors.
1610.
Top.
72’76
25’39
•33
1-77
•85
74-7
23-11
.09
traces.
1*16
•58
75’31
24-37
•11
••
traces
••
8-76
8’78
Westminster.
8’847
Bottom.
75’07
24-7
•12
traces
•8’869
8’94
The founders were afraid that by insisting on so much tin I
should make the bell too brittle. I was satisfied that if they cast it
properly it would not be so ; and I shall now give some proofs of
that. The first is, that the bell has now been rung frequently with
a clapper from two to three times as heavy in proportion to the bell
as all the other large bells in^England, and pulled sometimes by as
�12
Mr. E. Beckett Denison,
[March 6,
many as ten men. Secondly, I have a piece of the bell, or rather
of one of the runners at the top, which is always the least dense and
the weakest part of the casting, about 2 inches square, and ’6 inch
thick. I tried to break it in two with a 4 lbs. hammer on an anvil,
both with and without the intervention of a cold chisel, and I tried
in vain ; whereas a piece of the Doncaster bell-metal, cast in 1835,
which was exactly twice as thick, and therefore ought to have been
four times as strong, broke quite easily under the first blow of the
hammer, although it is at the same time softer, but of less specific
gravity by something like 12 per cent., and visibly porous.
In fact, the metal of this bell is superior in this very important
point of specific gravity to any bell-metal that I have examined, or
have found any account of, and to the highest specific gravity which
is given in any of the books for the densest alloy of copper and tin.
The only exception to this remark is that, according to my weighing,
the specific gravity of some small clock bells, made by a man of the’
name of Drury (who is now either dead or retired from business),
was exactly the same as this, if not a little higher. But I do not
profess to have done it with the same nicety as the bits of metal in
this table (except the two first, which are taken from a book) were
no doubt weighed with by Dr. Percy and Mr. Dick, at the Geo
logical Museum, where also the analysis of this and the old Lincoln
and York bells were made. And it is remarkable that there are
no small clock bells to be got now, equal either in density or
quality, to those of Drury’s, who is believed to have had some
secret mode of making them, as they contain nothing but the usual
metals. It ought therefore to be made another condition with a
bellfounder, that the specific gravity of his bells should not be less
than 8'7 ; and this, you observe, is sensibly below any of the
specific gravities in the above table, except the very bad metal of
the Doncaster peal of 1835, which was always complained of as
inferior to the old peal which it replaced, though the new peal was
a heavier one. About a year ago, the founders of this bell were
warned that it would not be passed by the referees, if the specific
gravity came below this figure, at least unless we were so perfectly
satisfied with its sound as to render further inquiry unnecessary ;
and I convinced them by a simple experiment, first, that it was easy
enough to test the soundness of the casting without breaking it, and
secondly, that such a thick casting would not be sound, or at any
rate, pot of proper density, unless the mould was made so hot as not
to chill and set the outside of the metal too soon. I may add, that
I knew before the weighing of the bits for specific gravity, that it
must be high enough, from the gross weight of the bell, in propor
tion to its size and thickness ; for if the specific gravity had been
8'7, instead of 8'9, the bell would have weighed 7 cwt. less,—a
quantity quite large enough for calculation even in a bell of 16 tons.
I remember that the man who came down from Mears’s to examine,
the old Doncaster bells of 1722 for re-casting, underestimated the
�1857.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
13
weight of the tenor by 2J cwt;, no doubt judging of its weight
according to what a bell of the same size and thickness would be
when made of such metal as their new peal was.
This bell is also so elastic, that I can make the clapper of
13 cwt. strike both ways, pulling it alone, and therefore of course
to one side only; which I never found the case with any other bell.
You will probably wish to hear something of the actual casting
of the bell, which is by no means an easy operation, if we may
dudge from the much greater rarity of good large bells than of
small ones. There was no bell in England above 3 tons weight,
except perhaps the tenor of the peal at Exeter, equal to many that
exist of half that weight. Sir Christopher Wren condemned and
rejected the great bell of St. Paul’s, for which the present was sub
stituted in 1716; and that rejected bell was made by a founder
whose bells, cast the same year as his St. Paul’s bell, are still at
St. Alban’s, and are very good ones. The present St. Paul’s bell
is itself inferior to that of Bow and the old York Minster bells ; and
both the Lincoln and York Minster bells are feeble and unsatis
factory, though the same foundry, until the last 30 or 40 years,
turned out many very good bells of smaller but yet considerable
weight. The metal was twice melted, as it is for making specu
lums. It was first run into ingots of bell-metal in a common
furnace, and then those ingots were melted and run into the mould
from a reverberatory furnace, in which the fuel does not touch the
metal, but the flame is carried over and reflected down upon it
from the top, or dome over the melting hearth. The ingots were
only in this furnace 2| hours before the metal was ready for run-,
ning, as the alloy of copper and tin melts, as usual with alloys, at a
much lower heat than the most obstinate of the two metals requires
alone; and the whole 16 tons were run into the mould in five
minutes. I understand that quick casting is essential to the secur
ing of sound casting.
Messrs. Warner make their moulds in a different way from
usual. First of all a hollow core is built up of bricks, and straw,
and clay, and made to fit the inside of the bell by being swept over
with a wooden pattern or sweep, turning on a vertical axis through
the middle of the core. For bells of moderate size, they keep a
number of different sized cores of cast iron, instead of building
them up of bricks ; and the iron cores are covered with the loam
as before. They are easily lifted into a furnace to be dried and
heated, whereas the brick ones must have the fire lighted within
them. But the great difference is in the outside mould, or cope.
Generally a clay bell is made on the top of the core, the outside
being turned by another sweep turning on the same vertical axis;
and when this is'dry, a third fabric of clay and straw is laid on the
outside of the clay bell, and this is called the cope. When it is
dry it is lifted off, and the clay bell broken away ; the cope is then
put on again, and the metal poured in where the clay bell was.
�14
Mr. E. Beckett Denison,
rMarch 6,
Not only is this a very roundabout process, but without great care
in putting the cope on again, the bell is apt to come out not uniform
in thickness all round. I have seen broken bells twice as thick on
one side as the other. Messrs. Warner’s plan is to make the cope
of iron larger than would fit the bell; that is lined with the casting
loam, which is turned by an inside instead of an outside sweep, and
the junction being between an iron plate at the bottom of the core,
and the flanch at the bottom of the cope, they can be fitted together
more accurately than the clay core and cope can be, and moreover
bolted together, so as to resist the bursting pressure of the melted
metal, instead of having to rely merely on the sand with which the
pit is filled, and such weights as may be laid upon it. The core
and cope were both made very hot before the pit was closed in with
sand ; for that is still necessary to prevent too rapid cooling, which
makes bell-metal soft, and what you may call rotten in texture,
and indeed if it is rapid enough, will make it malleable. This bell
was kept in the pit 12 days before the sand was taken out, and even
then the cope was too hot to touch, and it was left two days more
before it was taken off. It has now changed its colour so much
from the effect of the London damp and air, that you must trust to
my statement, that until it came here it presented that peculiar
mottled appearance which is so much admired in organ pipes, rich
in tin; in fact, a gentleman who came to look at it immediately
remarked its “ fine silvery hue,” with that inveterate propensity to
discover silver in bell-metal which seems to defy all chemical refu
tation. It is remarkable that the tin does not show itself in this
way, if it is less than about
of the copper, i.e., about 23 per
cent, of the alloy.
I have now told you all that is likely to be interesting about
the construction of this bell, so far as its shape and composition
affect the sound. But the description would be incomplete without
a short notice of another feature in the design, very subordinate
indeed to those which I have yet spoken of, but still not insig
nificant : I mean the construction of that part of the bell by which
it is to be hung. The common, indeed I may say, the universal
method, for no other has been ever used for large bells, is to cast
six ears or loops on the top or crown of the bell, which are techni
cally called canons, and through which certain iron hooks and straps
are put to fasten the bell to the stock. Small bells may be securely
enough hung by a single canon or plug with a hole in it, like the
common house or hand bells, or in any equivalent way. This
method of hanging by canons had long appeared to me unsatis
factory on account of its weakness; for not only has this metal
no very great tenacity lengthwise, but the canons are always the
weakest part of the casting, from being nearest to the top ; and, I
believe, there are few old peals in the kingdom in which some of
the bells have not had their canons broken, and replaced by iron
bolts put through holes drilled in the crown. Moreover, this
�1857.]
on the Great Bell of Westminster.
15
method of hanging makes it troublesome and expensive to turn
the bell in the stock, to present a new surface to the clapper when
it is worn thin in one place, and many bells have been cracked in
consequence. A Mr. Baker took out a patent a few years ago for
several new modes of hanging, for the purpose of enabling bells
to be turned in the stock. The first is simply making a hole in
the crown and hanging the bell by a single large bolt, which also
spreads out into the staple to carry the clapper. The objection to
this is, that nobody would like to trust the weight of a large swing
ing bell to a single bolt if he could use several instead; because,
although a single bolt can of course be made large enough to carry
anything, yet if there is any flaw or bad workmanship in it, the result
would be something frightful with a large bell; at any rate, nobody
who expressed an opinion about it on either of the two occasions
when it was exhibited at the Institute of Architects, nor any one
whom I have consulted about the making or hanging of the West
minster bells, nor indeed anybody anywhere whose opinion is worth
mentioning, so far as I can learn, approves of such a mode of
hanging a large bell like this, even though it does not swing, and
therefore I declined Mr. Baker’s invitation to adopt it. His other
method, as described in a recent pamphlet and in his specification,
is to cast a thickish pipe on the top of the bell, which is to go
through the stock and be fastened with a large nut, just as his iron
bolt was in the other plan : only the clapper bolt is now inde
pendent and goes through this pipe, and is held by another smaller
nut on the top of it. This seems to me to combine the two vices
of the weakness of canons and the risk of a single bolt in the most
complete manner, with the addition of a thread cut on this bell
metal pipe, which is about as weak a construction as possible. I
should think no person in his senses would use such a plan : in fact,
Mr. Baker himself did not seem to contemplate using it, but only
put it into his patent, as patentees do, with the object of securing
possession of every possible new method of doing the thing in ques
tion they can think of: but as patentees also do sometimes, he left
out at least one method which is better than those which he put in,
and that is the following.
On the top of the bell is cast whai has been called a button
and a mushroom; and either name will do well enough, except that
a mushroom has not a hole through it, and buttons have more than
one. It is in fact a very thick short neck, with a strong flanch
round the top, which is fastened to the stock, in moderate sized
bells, merely by bolts with hooked ends; and in very large ones, by
bolts passed through a collar, bolted together in two pieces. The
clapper (if there is one) is hung by a separate bolt, which goes
through the hole 'in the neck and through the stock ; and it has
nothing to do with carrying the weight of the bell, unless you like
to make it with a shoulder, so as to help the outside bolts. By this
method you hang the bell by a lump of its own metal as large as
�16
Mr. E. Beckett Denison.
[March 6,
you choose to make it; and besides that, when the bell is worn in
one place, it can be turned round to present another after you have
loosened the bolts a little. Clock hammers wear the surface of a
bell so little compared with ringing, that these Westminster bells
are not likely to want turning for 50 or 100 years, and therefore in
this case that advantage is not of so much consequence as usual, or
as obtaining the safest possible mode of hanging ; but as the power
of turning happens to be consistent with hanging the bell in the
strongest way, we all agreed in adopting this, except that the foun
ders rather regretted the loss of the canons as an ornamental finish
to the bell. Anybody who has happened to read the aforesaid
pamphlet, which Mr. Baker has very diligently circulated, will see
his drawings of all the three methods, (I mean his own two patented*
methods, and my unpatented one,) and will see also that he has per
suaded himself, after the manner of patentees, that my “ mushroom”
(the name which I think he himself gave it), held up under the
stock by four or six bolts, is identical with his pipe going through
the stock, and fastened on the top by a nut,—a point on which I
have heard yet no opinion but one, that his own drawings are the
best answer to his claim.
I shall conclude by giving you as complete a list as I have
been able to make out, of all the large bells in the world, except
in China, where the bells are of a different and inferior form. It
is substantially the same as that given in the Lectures on Church
Building before referred to, but with a few additions and correc
tions. I do not believe that the recorded weights of several large
bells can be correct, because they are inconsistent with the dimen
sions, which are much more likely to be right. The bells of Sens
and Exeter especially, cannot possibly weigh as much as is stated for
them, viz. 15 tons and 5i tons respectively. Indeed I am so con
vinced of that, that I shall put them in the table at 13 tons and
4| tons, and I believe that will be above the real weight rather
than below it. The Erfurt bell may, perhaps, be as heavy as is
stated, because I believe it is a thick one; and from its celebrated
quality, the specific gravity is certain to be high. I doubt whether
the Paris bell is as heavy as that of Montreal, because its diameter
is the same, and its thickness less throughout. To be sure, the
specific gravity of the Montreal bell is probably no better than
that of the late Doncaster bell-metal, from the same foundry ; and
therefore I have left the reputed weight in the table for the Paris
bell, though from other calculations I still doubt its accuracy. On
the other hand, I am certain that the weight of the two great
Russian bells is very much underrated. There can be no mistake
about the thickness of the large one, because a piece is broken out
high enough for a man to walk through upright, and as I said before,
the shape so nearly agrees with that of our bell, that the weight
cannot be very different from that given by the ratio of the cubes of
the diameters, and that would make it nearly 250 tons, which I
�on
1857.]
17
Great Bell of Westminster.
suppose is much the largest casting in the world. And the other
Russian bell, being 18 feet wide, must be 110 tons, according to
the Westminster scale, instead of 64, which is the recorded weight.
I might have added several other Russian bells to the list, from
Lyall’s book, all of great weights, but it seemed hardly worth while,
as everybody knows already that the Russians have surpassed all
the world in the magnitude of their scale of bellfounding, .a,nd two
or three instances prove as much as twenty. I have st'opped the
list at four tons. After these would come the single bells of Can
terbury, Gloucester, and Beverley Miiister, and the tenor 'bells of
the peals of Expter- and York, St Mary-le-Bow, St. Saviour’s, and
Sherbourne, which run’from 3i to 2| tons.
List
BELLS.
of
Weight.
Tom.
Cwt.
Moscow, 1736
. .1
250 ?
broken, 1737 . .J
110 ?
Another, 1817 . . .
Three others . . . 16 to 31
0
Novogorod ....
31
Olmutz....................
17 18
14
Vienna, 1711 . . .
17
Westminster, 1856
15 18|
13 15
Erfurt, 1497 . . .
Paris, 1680 ....
12 16
13 ?
Sens.........................
12 15
Montreal, 1847 . . .
3
11
Cologne, 1448 . . .
0
11
Breslaw, 1507 . . .
10 17
Gorlitz....................
10 15
York, 1845 ....
10 5
Bruges, 1680 . . .
0
St. Peter’s, Rome . .
8
Oxford, 1680 . . .
7 12
Lucerne, 1636 . . .
7 11
Halsberstadt, 1457
7 10
Antwerp....................
3
7
7
Brussels....................
6
1
Dantzic, 1453 . . .
Lincoln, 1834 . . .
5
8
4
5
St. Paul’s, 1716 . .
4 18
Ghent........................
4 18
Boulogne, new . . .
Exeter, 1675 . . .
4 10?
4
8
Old Lincoln, 1610
Fourth quarter-bell,
4 0
Westminster, 1857 )
Bells.
Diameter.
Thick
ness.
Ft.
In.
8
71
23
•.
••
..
»•
.«
9f
••
7
7
7
.•
si
Clapper or
Hammer.
..
••
••
E.
F.
& of bell.
••
..
••
••
12 cwt.
••
Inches.
22
18
Note.
0
•
•
10
9
9
8
. 8
8
8
ki
11
7
•
4
8
«
7
7i
••
••
8
•t
••
0
••
•
•
10J
9
6
6
•
6
6
6
4
8}
0
••
••
F.
G.
•.
.•
F sharp.
G.
••
•.
G.
..
..
••
G sharp.
•.
••
A.
6
••
A.
•.
•.
..
•.
5
A.
••
B flat.
5i
B.
..
••
..
•.
80 lbs.
.•
..
..
••
150 „
180 „
••
/5
,,
E. B. D.
�■ • nt ;>■
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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On the Great Bell of Westminster
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Denison, Edmund Beckett [1st Baron Grimthorp]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 17 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Lecture given at the weekly evening meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Friday, March 1857. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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1857
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" name="graphics1" width="88" height="31" border="0" alt="88x31.png" /><br />This work (On the Great Bell of Westminster), identified by <span style="color:#0000ff;"><span lang="zxx"><u>Humanist Library and Archives</u></span></span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Bells
Bellfounding
Bells
Conway Tracts