The Cathedral Bell’s story begins as a slight anomalie.
For approximately five decades, Shrewsbury Cathedral has remained shrouded in silence. No angelus; the proclamation peal of weddings non-existent and all because of a seizure of the iron clapper and fraying rope.
Shrewsbury Cathedral opened on 29th November 1856. John Taylor & Co Bellfounders, in Loughborough, the Leicestershire firm that made the bell (just three months after the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War against Russia); had been commissioned by Edward Welby Pugin to cast and install a single bell, that was in-situ by June of the same year.
Records show that the bell-wheel became detached from its headstock in 1973, meaning that the bell could not swing.
Skip to early 2020 and, in a two month-long project, the bell has been fully repaired, cleaned and restored and also refitted with an advanced automated ringing system.
The tolling system allows clergy and Cathedral officials to make the bell chime at the simple touch of a button from a remote control key fob which can be programmed far in advance.
The repair project has being carried out once again by John Taylor Bellfounders, now one of only two surviving Bellfounders in the country.
The work involved removing and repairing the bell, sandblast-cleaning it and checking for and filling cracks, before it was reinstalled on new fittings.
Before the bell was hoisted up and fastened above the roof to ring out once more, it was blessed by the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, during a ceremony at the Cathedral. The Bishop dedicated the bell to St John Henry Newman, who was canonised by Pope Francis last October, partly because it was first installed in the same decade that the Victorian cardinal preached his famous sermon on “the second spring” of English Catholicism.
The repair of the bell is among a range of new projects to recover the full beauty of the Cathedral and to enhance its mission of evangelisation.
Before the bell was hoisted up and fastened above the roof to ring out once more, it was blessed by the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, during a ceremony at the Cathedral. The Bishop dedicated the bell to St John Henry Newman, who was canonised by Pope Francis last October, partly because it was first installed in the same decade that the Victorian cardinal preached his famous sermon on “the second spring” of English Catholicism.
The repair of the bell is among a range of new projects to recover the full beauty of the Cathedral and to enhance its mission of evangelisation.
