A Grand Day Out

Taylor's Bell Foundry

On Thursday, the Audlem bellringers and friends went on a coach trip to Taylor's Bell Foundry in Loughborough to see how our bells and fittings were progressing. There were hundreds of bells there in various stages of restoration.

Taylors is the largest bell foundry in the world. It manufactures bells for use in clock towers, rings of bells for change ringing, chimes, carillons and handbells. The foundry is establishing a museum of bells and bell founding and is one of the few Victorian purpose-built manufacturing sites used for its original purpose. Since 1859 they have cast more than 25000 bells that are hung in more than 100 countries around the world. They have just cast a bell weighing 16cwt that will be finished in gold and shipped to a temple in Sri Lanka.

We had a fascinating tour and learnt how bells are cast -- ( essentially the same since the C12 th ), saw the new designs for hanging bells -- our new headstocks are in metal instead of wood, which will be more stable. There was specialist machinery for constructing wheels and the complicated art and science of tuning bells was explained to us. We saw an interesting experiment where bells had been made in different metals, but still the best is a combination of copper and tin as the sound resonates beautifully.

We saw our bells getting ready to be attached to the new headstocks and finally we were allowed to ring the bells that hang in the foundry's campanile.

Work on rehanging our bells will begin about the middle of April and should take about a month. We are looking forward to hearing the clock chiming and ringing our bells again.

If you would like to follow the work on our bells, click here or visit John Taylor bells and view current projects.

John Vickers.