The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-12-05

a pre-reformation foundry, established in 1870 in the twelfth year of the refsn of Queen Elizabeth Church Bell Foundry Is its name. and its mark is that Of the founder. Robert Mott-three bells sur rounding the scriptural initials 1. ii. S. It's site, on busy Whitechapel road is actually the same as the foundry of 157o hough the present rambling and pictur- esque works date back only two hundred years
 Two hundred years! The experience of passing the chiming portals is to step back the two centuries. Some kindly in- fluence has embalmed the old place, and even to it's wooden-beamed roof, 1t Is perfectly preserved. Not a touch of the twentieth century mars the picture In fact it is such a consistent specimen of splendid antiquity that it has been paint ed. engraved and described many times by celebrities.
 It is the tuning-or "chuning," to use the language of the place-chamber that you enter first. A set of new t&gs tho larger one weighing as much as ID tons lies about on their sides. radiant on their interiors because of the scraping pro- cess, which is the first stage of tuning The scraping exposes the tin and copper alloy The tuner is an active, old-fash- toned little man who darts about the ground (there are no floors in the bell foundry) yielding a baal-shaped ham, mer He strikes the bells in varied sue cession, from the largest to the sinstest, otherwise the deepest toned to the treble, and apparently has no need to stand off and catch the blend of vibrations, as is the case with a piano tuner. He has a tuning fork for the deepest bell, which oddly is not called bass, but tenor.
 When a peal of ,. 6, s, 10 or 12 bells is found to have been inaccurately cast, end they are too far out to be Drought up' by interior scraping, the tuner chooses the bell with the flattest tone and adopts it as the standard. bring ing the others down to it's pitch. IL is more difficult to bring g bell up" than 'sdoWn" To tune it sharp would necessitate cutting off it's rim edge. Careful scraping brings it down flat.
 They still use all their ancient pro- cesses, indeed the ancient expressions too, in this foundry. You pass through various dingy furnace rooms to the lloulGers. Here around brick cores they adously fashion a mud paste-whicl frey call "loom" which is tenderly add ed to daily and baked nightly. A mould s made for both interior and exterior | of each bell in this way and finally the
 'wo are ready for the pouring of the ne.al between them.
 ] This metal is tin and copper, as have said and nothing clse There is a poetic
 myth that silver makes a sweet tone Ac- | cording to these bell founders silve. l bell would give about the same tone as a wooden bell. The origin of the myth, l they say, is quaintly mischievous. For l the want of transportation it was the
 custom in more ancient times for bell
 casters to work in church yards where l they erected temporary foundries. The l narshioners would crowd about. and to them the founders would beg for mere 1 and more silver to give the bells q sweets
 CT and more heavenly ring. The silver
 later found it's way into tavern tills, not 1 into the bells.
 i However, when a large bell is being ast at the foundry we are visiting, and l distinguished visitors are present for cer- i amonies, it is invariably the custom for each to give a small silver coin which i $ dropped into the molten metal-they ! fee ii dropped i--but the founders won't l icrait too many coins.
 : King George and Queen Msry attended
 a casting os ihe three Abbey bells. It
 IS in th.s foundry that famous Big
 IL tse hour gong of Parliament clock,
 IT cast in 1858. Big Ben weighs 1S1s rs.
 s,r ne way I learned that the West