Elspeth Marrick
Master founder · since 1979
Sixth generation, and the only person alive who has poured every size the furnace will take. Builds the strickle boards by hand and will not let anyone else touch the sound-bow profile.
Beckside Works · since 1847
Nobody here has ever cast a bell in a hurry
Four people, one furnace, eleven days of drying that cannot be shortened. This is what the yard is and who is in it.
The long version
Started by a man who was told it could not be done here
Jabez Marrick was a Sheffield moulder who married into Nidderdale and was informed, repeatedly, that there was no trade for a bellfounder forty miles from anywhere. He poured his first bell in 1847 for the chapel at Wath, 4-1-12 in B flat, and it is still hanging.
Six generations later the yard has not moved and neither has the argument. We are still forty miles from anywhere, we still take eleven days to dry a mould, and we still cast one bell at a time because the furnace holds forty-one hundredweight and not an ounce more.
What has changed: the strobe tuner, the ball bearings, and the fact that we now write down what we find in your tower whether or not it gets us the work.
- 1847
- First pour, for the chapel at Wath. Still ringing.
- 11 days
- Drying time for a loam mould. Never once shortened.
- 41 cwt
- Furnace capacity. The reason we cast singly.
- 4
- People in the yard. Everyone can do two of the five jobs.
Who is in the yard
Four people, five trades
Rafe Dowsett
Tuner · since 1994
Came from an organ works and has never quite forgiven bells for being harder. Holds the tierce to two cents and has been known to take a bell back off the lorry over three.
Nuala Fenwick
Head bellhanger · since 2006
Runs everything above ground level: frames, headstocks, wheels, rope runs and the difficult conversations with faculty committees. Has been up 340 towers and remembers the stairs in most of them.
A bell is the only thing we make that nobody will ever look at closely. It goes up a dark tower, and for three hundred years the only evidence of our work is a sound in the air over a village. So it has to be right on the day it leaves the yard, because no one is coming back to check.
Elspeth Marrick · master founder
Jabez Marrick made me · Anno Domini MDCCCXLVII
The alloy
Why we have never changed it
Bell metal is 78% copper and 22% tin. Add a little lead and it pours more easily, sounds duller, and cracks sooner. Add zinc and you have made something that behaves like a gate hinge. Every substitute anyone has proposed to us since the war has been a way of making the pour easier, and the pour is not the difficult part.
We buy ingot from one smelter in Staffordshire, we assay every delivery, and we keep the certificates for the life of the bell. If you ever want to know what is hanging in your tower, we can tell you which barrow of metal it came out of.
Visitors welcome, with notice
Come and watch a pour
First Thursday of the month, weather and mould permitting. Bring boots and something over your arms. Ringing bands and church councils go to the front of the queue; everyone else waits for a month with a small bell in it.