page_title: St Mary Redcliffe
section_title: The church bells
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary Redcliffe / The church bells
caption_attribution_description: English: Nave vault in the parish church of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, England
context_page_description: St Mary Redcliffe is an Anglican parish church located in the Redcliffe district of Bristol, England. The church is a short walk from Bristol Temple Meads station. The church building was constructed from the 12th to the 15th centuries, and it has been a place of Christian worship for over 900 years. The church is renowned for the beauty of its Gothic architecture and is classed as a Grade I listed building by Historic England. It was famously described by Queen Elizabeth I as "the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England."
  Little remains of the earliest churches on the site although a little of the fabric has been dated to the 12th century. Much of the current building dates from the late 13th and 14th centuries when it was built and decorated by wealthy merchants of the city whose tomb and monuments decorate the church. The spire fell after being struck by lightning in 1446 and was not rebuilt until 1872. Little of the original stained glass remains following damage in the English Civil War with extensive new glass being added during the Victorian era. The tower contains 14 bells designed for full-circle English-Style change ringing.
context_section_description: The tower contains a total of 15 bells, one bell dating from as early as 1622 cast by Purdue and two cast by Thomas I Bilbie of the Bilbie family from Chew Stoke in 1763, the remainder were cast by John Taylor & Co at various dates, 1903 (9 bells), 1951 (1 bell), 1969 (1 bell) and 2012 (1 bell). The larger Bilbie (10th) bell along with the 1622 Purdue (11th) bell are included in the 50 cwt ring of 12 bells.
  The bells are hung in a cast iron and steel H-frame by John Taylor & Co dating from the major overhaul of 1903. A number of small modifications have taken place when each additional bell was added. The 50 cwt tenor bell is the largest bell in a parish church to be hung for full-circle English-Style change ringing and the 7th-largest such bell in the world, only surpassed by Liverpool Anglican Cathedral 11th (55 cwt), Wells Cathedral tenor (56 cwt), York Minster tenor (59 cwt), St Paul's Cathedral tenor, London (61 cwt), Exeter Cathedral tenor (72 cwt) and Liverpool Cathedral tenor (82 cwt). A new 8th bell was cast by John Taylor & Co in 2012 for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, replacing the 1768 Bilbie bell, a non-swinging bell with an internal hammer fitted for use as a service bell, and chimed from within the body of the church.
  The ring of 12 bells is augmented with two additional semitone bells. A sharp treble bell cast by John Taylor & Co in 1969 is the smallest bell in the tower and a "flat 6th" cast by John Taylor & Co in 1951 and allow different diatonic scales to be rung. All the bells have been tuned on a lathe; the tenor bell was tuned in 1903 and strikes the note of B (492 Hz). The St Mary Redcliffe Guild of Change Ringers was founded in 1948.
  The clock chime can be heard striking the quarter chimes on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th bells of the ring of 12 with the hours being struck on the largest 50 cwt (12th) tenor bell. The clock chime strikes the "Cambridge Chimes", commonly known as the "Westminster Chimes", every quarter of an hour daily from 7 am to 11 pm. The chimes are disabled outside of these hours. If the bells are in the 'up' position, the chimes are also disabled (normally during the day on Sundays). The clock was fully converted to electric operation during the 1960s. It is now driven by a Smith's of Derby synchronous motor. The old pendulum, gravity escapement and weights, etc., were removed when the clock was automated. What remains of the clock movement and electrified chiming barrel is housed in a large enclosure in the ringing room. The clock face is approximately 3 m in diameter and is on the northern elevation.
caption: The highly decorated vaulted ceiling in St Mary Redcliffe
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