The yard

One acre. Six generations. The same hole in the ground.

Josiah Wrenfield took the lease on four and a half acres between Trellick Lane and the river in 1782, and dug his casting pit at the low end where the sand would drain. Nobody since has found a good reason to move it.

Who is in the yard

Eleven of us · these six you will meet

1 Alice WrenfieldSixth Wrenfield to run the yard. Signs off every tuning before a bell is crated. Master founder
since 2009

2 Peter HollinsThirty-one years on the boring lathe. Has never once used a tuning app and never once needed to. Head tuner
since 1995

3 Ruth GanesanSweeps up the loam moulds, and has taught the last three apprentices to do it properly. Head moulder
since 2004

4 Sam AchebeRuns the tower gangs. Has been up something over twelve hundred towers and out of none of them. Bellhanger
since 2012

5 Doreen PryceCuts every inscription by hand in wax. Reads Latin, reluctantly, and corrects yours for nothing. Patterns & inscription
since 1988

6 Callum ReidyFourth year. Cast his first bell — a 4–1–7 sanctus for a chapel in Powys — last October. Apprentice moulder
since 2022

The other five are in the machine shop, the office, and on Fridays the Bell & Anchor

Section drawing of a bell foundry pour: shaft furnace, tap, launder, runner cup and the mould buried in the casting pit — Plate II · the pour. Eleven seconds of work, six weeks of getting ready for it.

Two hundred and forty-four years

What all that time actually buys you

Not mystique. What it buys you is the book. Every bell cast on this site since 1782 has a number, and against that number is its weight, its diameter, its alloy, its five partial readings, who cast it, who tuned it and where it went. Four thousand one hundred and ten entries. When a churchwarden rings up about a cracked fifth, we can usually tell them what it weighed in 1863 before they have finished the sentence.

The second thing it buys is knowing what does not work. Six generations of Wrenfields have tried the shortcuts — the quicker mould, the cheaper alloy, the tuning done by ear on a Friday afternoon — and written down what happened. That is why we still sweep loam moulds on a spindle in 2026, and why we will not quote against a foundry that is offering to do it in half the time.

The yard passed out of the family twice, in 1919 and again in 1974, and came back both times. Alice is the sixth Wrenfield to run it and the first to have a degree in metallurgy, which she says has been useful mainly for explaining to other people things Peter already knew.

The method

How a bell is made here

Fourteen weeks from the drawing on the wall to the rope in your hand. Eleven of those seconds are the interesting part.

1

Draw

The profile goes on the moulding shop wall full size, in chalk. Move a line a millimetre here and you move the nominal. Everything downstream is copied from this.

Week 1

2

Strickle

A strickle board is cut to the drawing and swept round a spindle, building the loam mould up wet in layers. Then a fortnight of drying, which cannot be hurried and has been tried.

Weeks 2–4

3

Inscribe

Letters and ornament cut in wax by hand and laid onto the mould. Whatever goes on here is on the bell for as long as the bell exists, so we send you a rubbing first.

Week 5

4

Pour

Bronze at eleven hundred and eighty degrees, down the launder and into the pit. A tenor takes about eleven seconds to fill. Then three days of not being allowed near it.

Week 6

5

Tune

Onto the vertical boring lathe. Metal comes off the inside, a few thousandths at a time, until hum, prime, tierce, quint and nominal are all true. You cannot put it back.

Weeks 7–9

6

Hang

Headstock, wheel, stay, slider and rope, assembled here so we know it fits, taken apart, and assembled again eighty feet up somebody's tower.

Weeks 10–14

“We asked for a bell to mark the year the village lost its school. Doreen cut all forty-one children’s names into the wax herself, and posted us a rubbing to check before the pour.”

Parish clerk · St Chad’s, Longdon