*Location:

   St.Lawrence Parish Church
   Chantry Lane (off Watling Street = A5)
   Towcester, Northamptonshire, England
   OS Ref. SP 695 487
   LL: N 52.13228, W 0.98763

Site locator map
City locator maps and gazetteer page

*Player:

   (None - automatic only)

*Contact:

   The Vicarage
   Chantry Lane
   Towcester, Northants  NN12 6AB
   T: (01327)350459
   E: Webform at bellsoftowcester.org.uk

*Schedule:

   Cambridge (Westminster) quarters plus
   tunes and hymns throughout the day.

*Remarks:

   6 bells formerly part of a ring of 8
   here (4 by James Keene, 1626: F#
   11-0-16, G#, A, B; plus 2 by W.Blews,
   1890: D#, F#) plus 3 old chiming bells
   from here (1 M&S 1871: E# [sic] + 2 M&S
   1893: A#,C#) = octave with minor
   third semitone.
   Also a manual keyboard, range unknown.

*Technical data:

   Electric-automatic chime of  9 bells
   Pitch of heaviest bell is D# in the middle octave
   Transposition is not applicable
   Keyboard range:     ----  /    NONE  
   There is one added semitone
   The whole instrument was installed in 2000
     by the maker cited in Remarks above
   No auxiliary mechanisms known
   Tower details not available
   Year of latest technical information source is 2005

The Website of the St.Lawrence Society of Ringers has full details of the history of the tower and restoration of the bells, but few photos.

The following commentary related to the previous combined ring/chime:
A page about the bells, written from a ringer's viewpoint, describes the nine fixed bells as an "automatic carillon".  Browsers equipped with Javascript can find additional pages through the Navigation button at upper right; unfortunately, there is no alternate plain-text navigation.  It seems reasonable to presume that the James Keene Gb/F# serves as the hour bell, and that the quarters are struck on F/E#, Eb/D#, Db/C#, Ab/G#.  The pitches of the ring of 12 overlap considerably with the pitches of the 9 dead-hung bells, approximately duplicating three of the quarter bells and one other (but not the hour bell);  It is not clear whether the tune-playing system can utilize any of the non-duplicated notes from the ring; if it can, the maximum effective size would be 17 notes based on E-flat. 

This work being a collection of recycled old bells, it is not indexed by foundry.

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

Index to all tower bell instruments in England.

   This page was built from the database on 18-Jul-16
   based on textual data last updated on 2016/07/04
   and on technical data last updated on 2016/07/04