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RYARSH, St Martin

Photo RCO 2007
3 bells, 6-3-22 in B flat
Grid Ref. TQ672591
Frame: timber - latest reconstruction 1879 from earlier frame members.
Retuned 1989 Whitechapel
Maidstone District
Hung for swing chiming with levers

DETAILS OF THE BELLS
Bell Weight Diameter Pitch Cast Founder

1

5-1-16

 30¼" D

1779

Pack & Chapman

2

5-1-3

 31⅛" C

1616

Joseph Hatch

3

6-3-22*

 34¾" B flat

1879

Mears & Stainbank

*Tenor supplied at 7-1-22
1. REΛD MR JAMES THURSTON MINISTER JEREMIAH HEAVER CHUURCH WARDEN 1779
PACK & CHAPMAN OF LONDON FECERUNT
2. io∫eph     hatch     made     me     1616
 
3. MEARS & STAINBANK FOUNDERS LONDON 1879
 

EARLIER BELLS
Bell Weight Founder Fate

3

8-1-24

Richard Chamberlain

 Recast 1879
3.

Sancta Ur∫vla Cum Sodalibvs Tvis Orate Pro Nobis
 
Bells bearing this shield with the letters "r c" were at one time believed to have been cast by a London founder named Robert Crowch. It is now thought that this mark belonged to Richard Chamberlain, also of London, who was working between about 1474 and 1510.

HISTORY
1616 Present middle bell cast.
1779 Present treble cast.
1879 The mediaeval tenor was recast and the bells were rehung with all new full circle ringing fittings by Mears & Stainbank with latchet stays and sliders. The timber frame probably dates to this year too.
1989 Bells retuned and rehung for swing chiming with levers, by Whitechapel.  The bells had been quite ringable some 3 or 4 decades earlier.
2003 Chris Pickford inspected the frame and wrote:

The wooden bellframe contains reused timbers from earlier frames and in its present form it represents several stages of construction. There are some curved braces from a mediaeval frame (fifteenth-century), with evidence of head struts and transoms.  The queen posts – in all four trusses – appear to relate to a reconstruction of the frame in about 1600, when long heads were added. The present heads on the two inner trusses, and the return sections on the north and south sides of the frame, relate to a further reconstruction and repair in the nineteenth-century.