Church Bells : Their Antiquities And Connection With Architecture.

CHURCH BELLS : THEIR ANTIQUITIES AND CONNECTION WITH ARCHITECTURE .

Read at the Architectural Museum , by the Rev . John H . SPERLING , M . A . So much has been said and written of late years on Church Bells , that , notwithstanding this is the first time the subject has been brought before the

Architectural Institute in the shape of a lecture , it is by no means easy to discourse upon it with any charm of novelty to thc scientific audience Avhich I noAv have the honour to address , many of you being probably as well up in the subject as your lecturer . Campanology , however ,

is a science ( I use this term advisedly ) which most appropriately holds a place in an association like our own , whose object is to develop and enunciate the close and inseparable connection of high art ivith the Catholic faith , for no musical instrument has ever exercised so great an influence upon architecture as the church bell . To it wc owe tho

most striking external features of our churches , wli ether in the A-aried groups of the manytowered city , or in the country spire pointing amidst the trees to the skies , or rearing itself heavenward like a ladder of fire , as seen in the horizontal rays of the rising or setting sun against

the tame horizon of the fen country of Bast Anglia . Then , again , there are the hundred different forms of cot and gable which crest the humbler village church .

Sometimes we find large towers standing altogether detached from the churches to which they belong ; the campanile at Chichester is a wellknown example to most of us . Canterbury and Salisbury also yielded similar examples , the latter having been wantonly destroyed almost within the

memory of those still living . Beccles , in Suffolk , is another notable example ; so is Ledbury , in Herefordshire , and West Walton , in Norfolk , the latter forming a noble entrance gateway to the churchyard . _ I might name a dozen smaller ones . Now these towers were not built for mere fancy or

picturesque effect , but to contain heavy bells , thc vibration of which would have a gradually ruinous effect upon the general fabric of the churches to which they belonged , were they an integral portion of them . For the same reason the central towers of minsters and other largo churches were intended

to be lanterns proper , and not campaniles . The experiment was tried in a few instances , and great ivas . the ruin that followed where the bells were at all heavy , as at Winchester and Ely . Bell towers proper were invariably as little connected as possible with their churches . With the exception of

Hereford , which fell down—Ely which never had n large bell—Wimborne Minster , and two or throe other examples , ive never sec a minster proper oven with a hona fuh < west tower ; and yet ive may be sure that their architects Avould most gladly have had them could it Lave been possible , for the

greater space allowed for fenestration permitted b y their absence is no equivalent ( viewed internally at least ) for the noble western arch which their existence would have afforded . The tame internal western perspectives of Winchester or Norfolk will hardly bear comparison with the western tower

churches , even of the smaller type of Boston or Wymondhara . Bell towers were placed either westward of the aisles or on one side of them , as at Exeter , on purpose to lessen their connection with the building , and guard against the ruinous shake of vibration . A virtue may indeed be said to ha \ r e

arisen out of the necessity , and an elegance and dignity to have been conveyed externally , by the double western tower ; but this must , I think , be viewed as au effect necessitated by a cause rather than as an original creation unfettered by circumstances .

Whether you agree to this theory about western towers or not , ive shall all , I think , concur in this , that our forefathers did not build towers and spires only to put into them the very small and illsounding article , the click of which is a standing nuisance to the western half of the metropolis .

Most old churches were furnished with such bells over and above thc chiming be \\§; they occupied cither the eastern gable of the nave as a sanctus bell , or they hung in some picturesque little louvre , outside the tower or spire . Specimens of this lattoo treatment may be seen at Hadlei gh in

Suffolk , Ichleton , andHinxton in Cambridgeshire . Sometimes they hung in the weather-boarding of the belfry windows ; but this latter arrangement is much more common on the Continent than in England , whole chimes being thus exposed to view in the belfries in tho south of France , Italy , & c . Though no larger than tho modern call-bell of a

London district church , their tone was sweet and silvery . Neither , again , did our ancestors build thoir towers as a very convenient smoke-flue , as was so common twenty years since , till we ivere bold enough to A enture upon the good , open , honest , undisguised chimney . I would urge upon

all connected with church building that the object of towers is to contain bells , spires being merely their ornamental capping ; ancl that , unless there is a good and reasonable prospect of more bells than one , the money would be far better expended in adding height and dignity to the interior , which

in a town church , ivhere we have now to contend with the rapidly-increasing bulk of secular architecture , is becoming more than ever a vital point . However , we must fall back upon the bell itself . In the first place , it is a satisfaction to bo able to claim an unmistakably Christian origin for an instrument which has laid so mi g hty a hold upon ecclesiastical architecture . The earliest names for

bells—" nola" and " campana" —would seem to point to Nola , in Campania , as their birthplace , and thc fifth mid sixth century as their earliest date . A favourite and expressive name for a church bell was " signuin , " I not long ago read