Tower of the month

The present tower was built between 1400 and 1404 as what would become the first stage in a near-complete rebuilding of the church. Constructed of four stages, each one roughly equal in height, the tower remains unfinished to this day.

Originally constructed as a detached tower, separate from the walls of the church, the lack of buttressing caused the newly built tower to lean, and the beginning of a spire (most likely inspired by the cathedral’s new spire, completed in 1320) was abandoned.

Between 1470 and 1490, the nave was rebuilt and expanded in footprint, so that the north wall of the tower became part of the south wall of the nave aisles, and since then it has remained joined to the building on the south side.

There are several references to bells and ringers in the tower in the 15th and 16th centuries, but one of the few that can be regarded with any certainty is the installation of ‘jacks’ on the eastern face of the tower in 1581. Similar to the famous ‘Quarter Jack’ figure on the tower at Wimborne Minster, he is a regimental soldier with an axe that strikes two small bells (approximately 1-2cwt each) to mark the quarter hours in the ‘ting-tang’ fashion. Like the original jack himself, these two bells date from 1581 and were cast by John Wallis of Salisbury.

Not including the quarter jack and his bells, the churchwarden’s accounts from 1547-1717 still survive and paint a good picture of the situation with the bells. In 1630, following a meeting of 10th November, John Dawton of Salisbury was instructed to cast a fourth bell for the tower, which implies the tower had three bells by this time.

The accounts record he is to be paid 14s per cwt for this new bell, though it does not record how much this new bell weighs. However, on the basis that in 1631 he was also asked to cast a new fifth bell, again at 14s per cwt, and that this new bell is recorded to weigh 19-1-12, it is likely that the fourth bell weighed approximately 14 cwt.

In 1661, William Purdue III was contracted to recast all the bells and add a sixth, “to within a quarter of a note to the bells at St Edmund’s”. St Edmund’s tower had collapsed in 1656 and the resulting new ring by Purdue had given so much satisfaction, that St Thomas wanted a replica!

Purdue also recast the sixth of the ring of eight the cathedral had that year, and this bell still survives today as the cathedral’s hour bell. The churchwardens accounts record the weight of the bells before and after his recasting, showing the total weight of the five bells pre-1661 as 89-0-12 and the total weight of the new ring of six as 83-1-5.

The fifth of the ring of six at St Thomas was recast again in 1683 thanks to the gift of John Wyndham, presumably after cracking. The bells were augmented to eight by the end of the 17th century, but the accounts are not clear about when this took place, or who did the work. In 1716, Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester was contracted to recast the ‘great bell’, which following the recasting, weighed 28cwt, as well as the second bell of the eight, both of which had cracked.

In 1771, Robert Wells of Aldbourne recast the remaining seven bells, to form the present ring of eight, although they no doubt sounded very different then, compared to now. There is a local legend that these seven bells were cast from the metal of the former ring of eight from the cathedral, but this cannot be true because the bells were not removed from the cathedral tower until 1777, some six years after these bells were recast!