English Bells and Bell Lore; A Book on Bells (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...at S. Mary's, Walcott's Sac. Arch. Rock's Church of our Fathers. Stamford, until the year 1825; and in very many parishes the custom is remembered, or a tradition of it exists. At Brixworth in Northamptonshire, the early morning bell is still rung at four o'clock; at Moulton, King's Sutton, and Towcester, all in the same county, it is rung at five o'clock; it is sounded at that hour at Gedney, and at Burgh in Lincolnshire, during the summer months, and an hour later in winter. In many places six o'clock is considered a more convenient hour: but the custom of ringing the early Angelus is gradually dying out. It has long been used as a call to daily work: thus at Tydd S. Mary a bell used to be rung early "to call men and carts to work"; and at Louth the third bell was, sixty years ago, rung at five o'clock, and was called the "getting up bell." Henry Penn, the bell-founder, had this in his mind, when he cast the bell at S. Ives, which is rung there early in the morning, for he placed upon it the pithy sentence: --Arise, And Go About Your Business. So too the first bell at Horncastle is inscribed: --Lectum Fuge Discute Somnum. And on the third at Friskney, Lincolnshire: --Laborem Signo Et Requiem. There is a good story told with regard to the ringing of the morning bell at Spalding: --In the early part of this century the widow of the sexton, continuing his duties, used to ring the six o'clock morning bell. She was also a washerwoman. Being engaged in the latter occupation at a clergyman's house with other women, she left her tub to ring the bell. One of her companions, putting a white sheet around her, followed her, and, in the dark, stood on a bench in the south porch, and on the old woman coming out of the church, and while she was locking t...