Bell tower

“ And when the time came, the bell on the tower, which sounded only for births, deaths, and weddings, rung merrily through the frosty air, bonfires were lighted on the hills, the fountain ran wine, and every man who chose might put in his cup and drink his fill. ”

“ As there is here no such defect the anomalous position of the medieval tower must presumably be attributed to "exigencies of the site," or in other words to the presence of some other building at the west end of the nave when in the fifteenth century it was decided to add a western bell-tower. ”

“ The Bell Tower, the only instance in England of a detached belfry, though not unusual abroad, is a massive and plain building, 120 feet high. The upper storey is octagonal and low, and resembles the great west tower of Ely, but is much inferior. Both these towers were built about the same time, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and are in the Perpendicular style. The north side of the nave exhibits in the clerestory the round-headed windows of the original Norman church. The parapet is fourteenth-century work. Flying buttresses connect the clerestory with the outer wall. ”

“ The ancient bell tower, which is situated on the west side of the place, is a favorite roosting place for them, and on this perch they patiently wait for a foreigner, and proceed to bleed him after approved Italian fashion. ”

“ The bell-shaped formation of the base of the tower is admirably adapted for withstanding the assaults of the sea, and is built solid to a height of thirty feet, above which the seas never strike, though I have seen the spray carried right over our balcony, a hundred feet from the rock. That the building remains to all appearance as intact as when completed, almost a century ago, speaks volumes for the skill and ingenuity displayed in its erection. In weather such as I have described we are as completely cut off from outside assistance as though we were at the North Pole ”

“ The stately giant on the summit of the tower, at the hither side of the great bell, solemnly strikes the hour—as a giant should who has struck it for centuries—with a grand, whole-arm movement, and a slow, muscular pride. We look up—we tourists of the red-backed books; we peasant-girls radiant with converging darts of silver piercing the masses of our thick black hair; we Austrian soldiers in white coats and blue tights; we voiceful sellers of the cherries of Padua, and we calm loafers about the many-pillared base of the church—we look up and see the Adoration. ”

“ Its present name is given to it in the survey of 1597; popular prejudice [Pg 19] rather than Tower tradition attributes the change to the murder of Edward and his brother, but the word seems hardly appropriate to the smothering of the poor children. The chief warder showed me some hooks in the gateway. On these, he told me, heads were stuck after executions, and these he said were the origin of the name.
The Bell Tower was so called from the alarm bell suspended from its summit. The bell now discharges the duty of summoning the garrison to St. Peter’s Church. ”

“ Both men, with their families, live in the tower. There are two bell-towers, one above the other, containing the great bell, stamped 1729, and eighteen others, of various dates up to 1828. An inscription here states that the towers were erected in 1678, in the reign of Carlos II., at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars. ”

“ At last, and always with an unexpected sensation, the bell turns in the steeple overhead and throws out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower to its foundation. As if there were magic in the sound, the sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are immediately thronged with two long lines of people, all converging hitherward and streaming into the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of a coach draws nearer—a deeper thunder by its contrast with the surrounding stillness—until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at the portal among their humblest brethren. ”

“ There was a strong draught in the tower, and the feeble flame flickered perilously. Her wrapper caught under her feet as she toiled up the narrow, crooked stairs, and it seemed to her that the sleeping nuns, in their distant wing of the building, must hear the creak of the old boards under even her light weight. But she kept on until she reached the top. There, still clinging to her precious candle with her left hand, she seized the bell-rope in her right. In another moment the solemn clang of the great bell filled every corner of the silent building. ”

“ The city is dark and still, and there is not a sound in all the vast edifice which towers so majestically in the gloom of the night. The heavy clangor of the clock bell dies away in the stillness, when suddenly there bursts out from the dark tower of the old church a perfect flood of melody. The bells seem beside themselves with joy, and they send their merry tones rolling through the silent streets below, and out upon the blue waters of the bay, bidding all men rejoice, for Christ is born. ”

“ I have found that between the outer wall of the Tower and the chamber there is a passage communicating with the top of the ballium wall to the west. Along that I will proceed until I reach the roof of the Bell Tower where I will make fast the rope for our descent. After we are down we must make use of our wits to pass the gate in the Byward Tower and so reach Tower wharf where friends will await us with a boat. There is no moon, and the darkness will favor the plan. ”

“ At high water they come quite close to the tower, and their antics are seen to advantage from our balcony. Rolling over each other, they make for the bottom, gliding along the rocks like hounds hunting in couples; then with a rush they are on the surface, floating bolt upright, with their muzzles almost touching, staring with their large, expressive eyes into each other’s face. An almost human touch was given to their play by one taking the head of the other between his fore-flippers, as if about to salute him, or more likely her, in the orthodox fashion. ”

“ Their wonderful sense of proportion, their habitual use of vertical lines, and the character of their windows helped them to build what are perhaps the finest towers in Europe, and the central tower of York Minster is one of the finest of all. Even the absence of pinnacles, if it is an accident, seems to be a lucky accident, and gives this tower an unrivalled dignity and air of restraint suitable to the character of the whole cathedral. For whatever may be said against certain parts of the exterior, as a whole it is one of the most magnificent in the world. ”

“ The old gabled tower, with the great bell in the clochard or belfry beside it, I had oftentimes laughed at with Simon Powell, as at a thing of more pretence than usage; the alarm not having been rung therefrom for nigh a hundred years. But now the sight of it brought tears to my eyes for the very peace which clung about it. For well I knew that I was come at the end of my time of quiet and was to adventure forth of my old home into regions full as strange and difficult as any of Simon's uncouth caves and elvish forests. ”

“ The capitals and the arches themselves (which are of three orders) are moulded with rounds and hollows very strongly marked, and the hood of the southern arch terminates eastwards in a bunch of foliage.
The interior of the towers is more richly treated than is usual. Over the tower-arch is a small arcade of four members with clustered shafts, and with a string below, while the other three walls are plain up to the windows, each of which is flanked, as on the exterior, by two blind lancets. ”

“ It is very satisfactory to be able to state as testifying to the excellency of the materials used in its construction, as well as to the careful and well devised scheme and execution of the workmanship, that the tower as yet shows no symptoms of decay, and stands as strong to-day as when newly erected. ”

“ The exquisite steeple, however, was built shortly before the reign of Charles V., (who stood as godfather to the great Bell,) from a design which originally contemplated two [56] towers of equal grandeur and elegance, but one only was completed. The ascent is fatiguing in the extreme; and as the day was stormy, the vibrations of the tower were sensibly felt as the wind rushed through its beautiful galleries. ”

“ Between the hills lies a stony valley, up which we turned our steps, and which led us to the heart of desolation and the end of all things. Half-way up the hillside stands a tower, whose whitewashed wall is a landmark to all the country round. Even from the far distant peaks of the opposite mountains, the Tower of Silence is visible, a mocking gleam reminding the living of the vanity of their eager days. For the tower is the first stage in the weary journey of the dead ”

“ I rode northwards from the ’Ashiḳ for exactly an hour to the ruins of Ḥuweiṣilât where there are traces of a wall set with towers. One tower alone stood to any height; it appeared to mark the north-west corner of a rectangular enclosure, in the centre of which was a mound covered with fragments of tiles, but the east side of the enclosing wall was so completely destroyed that I could not make out the line of it. ”

“ The Central Tower is the first feature to claim our attention now that we are come to the description of the exterior and its parts. The earliest tower over the crossing was raised, in 1343, by Bishop Hamo de Hythe, who crowned it with a spire of wood, covered with lead, and placed in it four bells, named Dunstan, Paulinus, Ythamar, and Lanfranc. This spire and the masonry of the tower caused great anxiety at the end of the seventeenth century, but with some not very considerable repairs then, and some slight ones later, lasted until 1749. ”

“ Hugh's tower, which has a large arched recess and a niche, similar to those in the west front.
The curious "stone beam," about which so much has [86] been conjectured, and so little is known, is constructed between the walls of the two western towers, just above the stone vault of the nave. It is really an arch of very slight curvature, composed of twenty-three stones of unequal length, but of uniform depth and breadth. Examination has proved that there is nothing but mortar in the joints, and there are no traces of iron having been used in the construction. ”

“ The towers are massive and lofty, being 220 feet in height. The right-hand tower may be ascended, and the view to be had well rewards the effort of climbing. It contains the big bell, weighing nearly 30,000 pounds. ”

“ So at least say the admirers of King Charles I, who argue that nothing quite so hideous could have been erected in his reign. It is a plain square structure, seventy-five feet in height, in four stages, gradually diminishing in area upwards, the lower part supported by buttresses, and the summit crowned by battlements, with a small bell-turret and vane. More interesting than the tower itself—which is, in fact, an incongruous addition to the church—are the Bells which it contains, a precious inheritance from the Augustinian Canons, and in some respects the most remarkable in London. ”

“ The steeple is lofty: it is entered by old doorways opening on to the paved roof of the aisles, and is groined both under and above the bells. An old newel staircase in one angle has been destroyed, and steps projecting from the side walls have been ingeniously introduced instead. On the top of the tower a large bell is suspended from the intersection of four arched stone ribs; these ribs rise about twenty-five feet from the roof, are about one foot six inches thick, and abut against piers or dwarf pinnacles at the base, about four feet deep by one foot eleven inches thick. ”

“ A dull, rumbling noise, distinctly audible in the light room, announces their presence at the base of the tower, and at low water a dotted line of chips and abrasions marks their passage across the Rock to where they are again hurled to the depths. Others, again, may bring up in some sheltered corner, where, if not considered dangerous, they may remain a fixture for years. ”

“ In the decoration of the inner tower walls there is a lozenge-shaped panel in each of the spandrels, sculptured into a floral ornament something like the Greek honeysuckle, a shallow arcading in the angles, and a cornice of zigzag moulding extending round the walls, immediately below the modern ceiling (1886) of panelled oak.
36 The piers at the angles of the tower are not very much more massive than the adjacent walls, and do not strike one as capable of sustaining a superstructure of any great weight. ”

“ It was completed by{11} Prior Selling, who held office in 1472, and has been variously called the Bell Harry Tower from the mighty Dunstan bell, weighing three tons and three hundredweight, and the Angel Tower from the gilded figure of an angel poised on one of the pinnacles, which has long ago disappeared. The tower itself is of two stages, with two-light windows in each stage; the windows are transomed in each face, and the lower tier is canopied; each angle is rounded off with an octagonal turret ”

“ Before rebuilding the tower it would naturally occur to the builders to raise the north and south arches to a level with the others, and to do this it would be necessary to raise the roof. In such a case it would be quite natural for the builders to hit upon such a roof as at present exists. They would have before them already the example of a wooden vault in the nave, and for the sake of uniformity they would be inclined to make their new roof as much like that vault as possible. ”

“ On the other faces of these towers the arches are not so richly moulded, and the shafts are single and also detached, except in the uppermost stage of the north tower, where they are engaged and filleted. As the second stage does not descend so low upon the western face as upon the other faces, the string-course below it, after passing round the corners of the façade, is stopped, and when it is resumed it passes above the sill of the [43] arcade, being carried round the little plinths of the shafts. ”