*Location:

   Highland Arts Theatre
     (originally
     St.Andrew's Presbyterian Church)
   Bentinck Street,
     between Pitt and Prince Streets
   Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada
   LL: N 46.13875, W 60.19397

   Pull-down folding ladder in ceiling.

Site locator map

*Player:

   Sara March
   - and -
   Glenda Watt
   - and -
   Mike Glabay

*Contact:

   Highland Arts Theatre
   40 Bentinck Street
   Sydney, NS  B1P 1G2
   T: 902-565-3637
   E: highlandartstheatre@gmail.com

*Schedule:

   No regular schedule

*Remarks:

   Added semitone flat 7th; tenor swings.
   Not in Sydney Mines as once reported.
   Church was decommissioned in July 2013
   and sold in September;
   congregation merged with Trinity &
   First United churches.

*Technical data:

   Traditional chime (chimestand) of 10 bells
   Pitch of heaviest bell is E  in the middle octave
   Transposition is nil (concert pitch)
   Keyboard range:     E F#  /    NONE
   There is one added semitone
   The whole instrument was installed in 1911
     with bells made by McShane
   Auxiliary mechanisms: S1
   Tower details not available
   Year of latest technical information source is 2012

On the theater's Website, the About Us page has a brief history of the building, along with current and historic photos of it.

A YouTube video of a performance shows the deep keystroke typical of early (and unmodified) American-made chimestands, as well as the atheleticism required to play such a keyboard effectively.  The same or a similar video can be found here or here.

News article on sale of the building and merger of the congregation elsewhere

A slideshow from a now-missing news article about the decommissioning of the church includes photos of the chimestand, etc

A page about Sydney history reports that St.Andrew's Presbyterian was built on Bentinck Street in 1900.

But a Sydney Presbytery page says that the Bentinck Street building (its third) was erected in 1910; it has a clickable photo of the building.

Where this work lies in the sequence of output of the McShane bellfoundry.

Ranking among all North American chimes by size (number of bells).
Ranking among all North American chimes by weight (pitch).
Ranking among all North American chimes by year of completion.

Index to all tower bell instruments in NS.

   This page was built from the database on  5-Nov-21
   based on textual data last updated on 2021/09/30
   and on technical data last updated on 2021/09/30