The Bells!
- Bow Bells
- The recording used by the BBC to "fill in" during many moments of crisis
was made in 1926. The Queen's Changes are heard. There are 12 bells in the
peal but only 10 are heard because only 10 ringers turned up for the session!
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- Big Ben
- The Westminster Chimes are taken from Handel's Messiah:
All through this hour
Lord be my guide
That by thy power
No foot shall slide.
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- Waltham Abbey
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These were the bells that Tennyson reputedly heard from
the grounds of Beech Hill Park, inspiring the lines “Ring out, Wild
Bells”, part of In Memoriam, reflecting sorrow at the early death
of his sister's fiancé. The poet spent some years at nearby High Beech,
which apparently suited him well on account of its proximity to London,
combined with a genuinely rural setting in Epping Forest. But things did
not go well for Tennyson - it seems he lost much of the family fortune
after the superintendent of a nearby asylum persuaded him to come in on
a hare-brained scheme for mechanical wood-carving to supply the
burgeoning market for church furnishings. Perhaps it was during his
subsequent depression that the poet wrote of his village neighbours “the
people are sufficiently hospitable but it is not in a good old-fashioned
way so as to do one’s feelings any good…”.
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