Church bell towers of London
It's been a busy couple of months preparing my next piece collecting bell sounds to help train one of my phones detect ringing in the distance. I might end up using this material for flavor only as Apple's inbuilt sound recognition is quite decent already, but had fun riding around making field recordings for a change.
I may be not religious, but lots of people are or used to be and much of London's history extends from churches that are then more than places of worship and like portals into the past.
Take St Giles-in-the-Fields for example where some type of chapel has stood for close to a millennium and which was staging ground for attempted political disruption at least twice in less than 200 years, both reformist, with the Oldcastle Revolt (1414), and regressive, with the Babington Plot (1586). Or St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, famously a local soundmark, in World Soundscape Project terms, inside the acoustic horizon of which true Cockneys are said to be born.
Daring You know a Hawksmoor church by the steeple. Restored to match the original after significant mid 19th century alterations, Christ Church Spitalfields (1714-29) was meant to assimilate Huguenot emigres who had fled France to escape Catholic hostility and the Dragonnades. Made of Portland ashlar also, St George-in-the-East, Upper Wapping (1714–29) was partly damaged during The Blitz (1941) and gutted to plant a smaller interior structure (1964). Its parish was a poor law union, but a workhouse had been set up nearby before Earl Grey's government passed Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (4 & 5 Will. 4. c. 76).
According to the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks there are 29 churches within old city walls alone in service today. Twenty two of them are Sir Christopher Wren's out of 51 his office designed after the Great Fire (1666). Like St Stephen Walbrook (1672-79) up the road from where he used to live next to a Roman Mithraeum. Its dome was prototype for St Paul Cathedral's and its present day altar, briefly deemed unsuitable by ecclesiastical court (1986-87), was carved by Henry Moore (LH 630, 1972, installed 1978).
There was an effort few decades later under the New Churches in London and Westminster Act 1710 (9 Ann. c. 17) to develop or to renovate as many as 50 more and as far as Gravesend, Kent in order to accommodate a growing population. These here are the fully funded eventually erected that remain; St John Horsleydown, Southwark (1727–33, Hawksmoor and James) was bombed in 1940 and retired in 1968.
St Alfege Greenwich (1712–18, Hawksmoor) and St Paul Deptford (1713–30, Archer)
Known as Queen Anne's, but completed after her passing, half came from Wren's legendary clerk and colleague Nicholas Hawksmoor who with James Gibbs and John James had been surveyors for the commissions created to oversee the project.
St Anne Limehouse (1714–30, Hawksmoor) and St Mary le Strand (1714–23, Gibbs)
St George Bloomsbury (1716–31, Hawksmoor), St Mary Woolnoth (1716–24, Hawksmoor), St George Hanover Square (1720–25, James)
St Luke Old Street, Cripplegate (1727–33, Hawksmoor and James) and St John Smith Square, Millbank, Westminster (1713–28, Archer)
And with churches go massive, thundering bells. I used to take the institution that was the Whitechapel Bell Foundry where so many great ones were cast for granted. Not all is lost yet from what I gather, but tragic that its fate is hanging by a thread still. Bells are magical, primitive and sophisticated equal parts.
I knew a bit about strike tones from JS Risset's (1969) and Jonathan Harvey's (1980) spectral studies. But, having listened in on enough practice sessions now, was fascinated to also learn about change ringing and the bands and dedicated communities around it. Rules and terminology are very inspiring.
Summarizing some of the basics, changes or rows are sequences past the first round down a diatonic scale and there are two ways of going through them by handstroke: (a) call and (b) method, the former after the conductor, the latter from memory. To make things easier, well established patterns have names such as the Whittingtons, the Queens, the Tittums.
The challenge of actualizing all possible permutations or extent by adhering to the truth of not repeating any rows is the number of bells factorial! A dozen bells would require 479,001,600 and that could take ages to tackle. The bar most people aim for therefore is a peal around the three hour mark typically. To be accepted as such a performance should combine e.g., on up to seven working bells 5,040 baseline changes and meet other criteria set by the Central Council referred to as decisions. Quarter peals of about 45 minutes are also not uncommon.
Need a new hobby? Look no further! Laughter breaks out rehearsing at St Mary Magdalene's Holloway Road.
Peal tables go back centuries, but City of London's longest one so far was carried out in 2013 at St James "Wren's lantern" Garlickhythe. It consisted of 18,432 changes in the Superlative Surprise Method lasting 37,020 seconds.