St. John's United Bells

These bells are in the 1920 St John's United Church belfry at Willow & Windsor Streets, Halifax.

There's a caption for each one; you can hover-over the thumbnail or click on it to see it.

Technical data: Traditional chime of 13 bells. Pitch of heaviest bell is F in the middle octave. The whole instrument was installed in 1920 with bells made by Gillett & Johnston.

In the late 1990s, one spring, SJU Elder Al Stewart talked me into taking a look at them - they hadn't been played in many years. We spent several cold and noisy afternoons in that steeple, fixing things, adding big rubber bands made of car inner tubes, getting joints working again, and a little carpentry, and on Easter Sunday, Al played them. Afterwards a woman, no spring chicken, came up to the belfry with tears in her eyes: "I've lived down the street my whole life, I haven't heard those bells since I was a little girl."

I was the bell tech from then until the church closed ca 2013. These pics were taken a week before Easter 2001.

Here's the TowerBells.Org page for the chime, and here's the AllChimes.Org entry.

Click on any thumbnail to enter the slideshow at that point.

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