EARLY MEDIEVAL BELL

Unknown artist

A copper-alloy and iron incomplete early-medieval bell. The bell is formed of sheet copper-alloy with iron sheet on the interior and exterior. The bell is 45.6mm in height and has a complete D shaped projecting loop which is rectangular in cross section (8.3m m wide and 4.45mm thick). Below the loop the bell is 9.35mm wide and 39.05mm and widens and expands to the base where it is 37.95mm in length and 36.2mm wide and 1.85mm thick. Internally there is the remains of a iron projection, the majority of which is now missing.Cormac Bourke comments:This latest find, although it's smaller, resembles in elevation the largest of the Asby Winderwath bells (Edwards 2002, no 9), being wide in relation to its height and having pulled shoulders, but its triangular profile best matches no 8. Its proportions are not those of the classic Irish, Scottish and Welsh ecclesiastical bells and, as with all of these bells (including the latest I've read about from Crummack Dale and those from burials at Lechlade and Kingston Down) there's also a marked difference in size. The English bells are miniature in Irish/Scottish terms and the enshrined bell from Kilmichael Glassary, which is just 82mm high excluding the (lost) handle, is the exception rather than the rule.I don't believe these English bells, including this example, are ecclesiastical and reckon them to be animal bells, signalling bells and talismans. The difficult ones are Tattershall Thorpe, Flixborough and Repton, since they're bigger (though not very big), and Flixborough has its 'crosses' and Repton has a suggestive context. But they're not classic bells along Irish/Scottish lines either, since the horizontal curvature of their faces makes them sub-oval in plan and almost does away with their 'quadrangular' form. If the Flixborough crosses are an owner's mark and the Repton bell was either workshop kit or a Viking acquisition (or both) the ecclesiastical connotations start to fade away.