On 23 January 1934, Sherborne Abbey’s great tenor bell arrived back in Sherborne from London, where it had been recast by Mears & Stainbank at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
Traditionally, the tenor bell was known as Wolsey’s great bell because it was believed that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had had the bell made in Tournai and given it to Sherborne in 1514, although this claim remains unsubstantiated.
The tenor bell was recast at the instigation of Old Shirburnian Major John Harley Bridges Hesse (1872-1946), an authority on bells who pointed out that the tenor bell was out of tune and that it had been since it was last recast in 1865! Major Hesse led an appeal to have the bell recast, to which many Old Shirburnians contributed.
On 4 October 1933, the tenor bell was lowered from the Abbey tower and sixty boys from Sherborne Prep School, including Major Hesse’s son Robert Hesse (1925-2001), helped pull the bell on its trolley to the west door of the Abbey. In order to get the tenor bell up a steep ramp and out into the Abbey Close, Major Hesse enlisted the help of 100 boys from Sherborne School, who were then on their morning break.
When the recast tenor bell arrived back at Sherborne railway station on 23 January 1934, the boys from Sherborne School were determined to recreate the events of 2 January 1866, when the bell was last recast and returned to Sherborne, on which occasion boys from the School had dragged the bell around the town with horses before hoisting it into position in the Abbey. And so, on 23 January 1934, boys from Sherborne School dragged the tenor bell on its trolley from the railway station and up the Digby Road to Sherborne Abbey.
On the recast tenor bell was reproduced the original inscription – ‘By Wolsey’s gift I measure time for all. To mirth, to Grieffe, to Church, I serve to call’, followed by details of all the previous recastings:
‘Recast 1670, by Thomas Purdue of Closworth, Somerset, Joseph Barker – Vicar, Gustavus Horne, Walter Pride – Churchwardens.
Again recast 1865, by John Warner & Sons of London. Edward Harston – Vicar. James Hoddinott, Francis Stokes – Churchwardens.
Again recast 1933, by Mear & Stainbank, Whitechapel Bell Foundry, London. Wilfred Marcus Askwith – Vicar. Clement Horace Adams, James Florance – Churchwardens.’
A.B. Gourlay in his History of Sherborne School (1971) noted that by a remarkable coincidence on the same day at exactly the same hour in the afternoon a set of bells was sent from Tournai to Ypres to replace those damaged during the First World War.
Further reading:
Peter Soole and Katherine Barker, The Bells of Sherborne Abbey (2018)
Posted 22 January 2024 by Sherborne School Archives
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