A fact from St Lawrence Church, Ipswich appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 14 September 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Fifteenth Century actually doesn't seem all that old. I've seen bells of Dark Age date in museums, so bells have obviously been made for at least thousand years prior to St. Lawrence's. You'd think that a set would surely have survived somewhere where there are churches with a long continuity of use, in Greece or Italy, say. I suspect the Ipswich ones might be the oldest set in the world in Britain. Steve Graham (talk) 22:51, 14 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
I'm afraid that reliable sources beat your suspicions. Also, if there's a long continuity of use, they're more likely to break. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 22:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Absolutely, the key thing here is that all the bells are of a similar age, and still in use in their original tower. Bells are actually surprisingly fragile if hit in the wrong place, and older casting techniques were prone to getting air bubbles and so on in the cast which weakens the bell. Also if the bells are not regularly turned so that the clapper strikes the sound bow in a different place the wear can also cause the bell to crack, I have seen it suggested that English full circle style ringing is also kinder to bells than other methods. Also most churches don't have as many bells as are commonly found in English churches. There are exceptions, obviously, but the continental carillons tend to be more modern, and although Russia has a fine tradition of bell-casting, and many monasteries had multiple bells, at various times many older Russian bells have been lost, particularly in the Communist era (bells have often been melted down in war time, as the the alloy used is quite similar to that once used for casting cannon). The Veronese ringing tradition is has some commonality with English change ringing, and there churches do have sets of multiple bells, but I don't know much about the ages of those. Even in England, there are individual bells which are older, some still rung, but a complete set is unusual. David Underdown (talk) 08:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
