Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/51

 12 8. V. FEB., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

45

letters and decorative borders. His bells, however, are found only in Suffolk, Essex, No bells cast by him ar " It will be noticed tha the inscriptions on his bells differ from those

/ T"k T> 5 *

and Cambridge, found in Hants.

of R. B.

In a paper read before the Hampshire Field Club in the autumn of 1892, and Tevised by the author in 1901, the Rev G. E. Jeans, Vicar of Shorwell, refers to two R. B. bells in the tower of St. Peter's Church there, and in a parenthesis says : " R. B is Robert Bond, a bell -founder at Win Chester." The learned vicar, in replying to a query of mine in November, 1918, writes :

" I think indications strongly point to the Bonds having a foundry at Winchester. In North's ' Church Bells of Lincolnshire ' (p. 141) you will find that the priest's small bell at Bin- "brook St. Mary and the one bell at Croxby have ^" W. ^* North says he does not know this founder. The W I suppose is for Winchester.

Between the R and the B, and above the W, is a bell.

Further references to the Bond family are iound in Mr. Percy G. Stone's * Architectural Antiquities in the Isle of Wight.' In com- menting on a bell at Newchurch, cast by Anthony Bond in 1626, he adds in a foot- note :

" The family of Bond were bell -founders in the first half of the seventeenth century, and bells made by them exist in many of the churches t>oth on the Hampshire mainland and in the Isle of Wight."

Referring to the second (now the tenor) bell at Chale Church, Mr. Stone writes : "A seventeenth -century bell from the Bonds' foundry has round it the lettering : ANTHONY.

BOND. MADE. ME. 1628 . W.B. RT." In

alluding to a bell located at Brading, Mr. Stone states : on bells with

The initials 'A. W.' appear R. B.,' as in the church of St. John Baptist, Winchester." The Salis- bury foundry, he adds, generally produced short religious mottoes such as " Prais the Lord," found on the Brading bell. Lukis, tion on the Winchester bell the fourth bell GOD is MY HOPE B.B. 1606, and, following the date, A. W : I. W. (The initials after the date may refer to the wardens.)
 * Bell Inscriptions,' p. 76, gives the inscrip-

Dr. Amherst D. Tyssen likewise alludes to the Brading bell and the A. W. initials in his ' Sussex Church Bells ' :

" The initials A. W. on eight bells in Sussex stand for Anthony Wakefield, a bell-founder at Chichester, who was casting bells in 1694-1605. His Sussex bells have the epigraph PRAIS THE XORD with the date inscribed on three, and PRAIS -GOD on four of the series. Anthony Wakefield

may be credited with the fourth bell at Brading, in the Isle of Wight, which bears PR is THE LORD 1694, and the initials A. W. with many other initials.

" In the latter part of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, much of the work in Hants and Sussex was done by itinerant founders. In South Hants and Dorset we find bells by Anthony Bond (1615-1636)."

In Hampshire the Anthony Bond bells are few in number. One of 1623 date is at North Stoneham ; and four (of the peal of five) at St. Lawrence, Winchester, were cast by him in 1621. Two of his bells located in the Isle of Wight have already been commented on. The epigraphs on his bells are in striking contrast to the short devotional inscriptions on the R. B. bells.

Canon Raven, * The Bells of England,' writes :

" Anthony Bond recast the great tenor at Wimborne Minster, Dorset, in 1629, placing on it his monogram PER A.B ANNO DOMINI 1629, and after the churchwardens' names a shield bearing a chevron and three mullets "

a founder's mark not discovered on any other

bells cast by him.

In reply to a query, Mr. A. Heneage Cocks wrote in May, 1918 :

I can add nothing further concerning the identity or locality of R. B. I have again men- tioned him in both my papers on local bell- foundries in the Victoria History of Bucks and Berks. .. .Mr. Walters is the best chance, but I have looked up his ' Essex Bells,' and R. B. is not mentioned there. As to the foundries, Salisbury and Winchester are likely guesses, but, so far as I know, are merely guesses. I am rather a believer in geographical distribution for spotting early bells and even as late as R. B. If you take county, and find it is near either of those cities, -hough it will not prove the point, it will certainly carry weight : or it may point to some smaller place where there was a foundry."
 * he centre of the sixteen bells you know of in the

On another occasion Mr. Cocks remarked : " I did a good deal of hunting into the Winches- ter archives in pursuit of bell -foundries, but quite unsuccessfully .... I am not aware that any one has done Salisbury."

In regard to the possibility of the foundry being located at Salisbury, Lukis, in his ' Wiltshire Bell Inscriptions,' pp. 99-130, mentions no bell of the 729 in that county as being cast by either R. B. or Anthony Bond.

Dr. Tyssen wrote to me recently concern- ing the former :

" I see no grounds for connecting R. B. with Anthony Bond. The latter was an itinerant bell- founder from London, and the fact of the Chale bell having, according to oral tradition, been cast locally, strengthens the supposition."