Links

Bell-founder's waste

A section through the pit at Head Street with the mould fragments. These show on the picture as small red pieces. The slightly greenish black layers contain high proportions of charcoal and slag.	A fragment of mould with a letter W scratched on the inner surface.

A 17th-century pit at Head Street contained hundreds of bits of clay moulds and substantial quantities of metal-working waste. Most interestingly, several of the mould fragments have a large letter M faintly scratched on them (as on the example shown here). Similar marks are known on eight bells by the famous bell-founder Miles Gray. The letter is thought either to represent the first initial of the name of his foreman, William Harbert, or be an inverted M for Miles himself. There were three generations of Grays, all called Miles, who made bells. It is thought that the one associated with the letter M was the middle one. The eight bells with the letter M were cast between 1618 and 1622.

Since Miles Gray lived in the parish of St Mary's at Colchester and the site at Head Street is inside the parish boundaries, we asked the question Could any of the mould fragments and other debris from the pit represent waste from bell-making by Miles Gray?

Dr David Dungworth at English Heritage kindly examined some of the fragments of mould and metal-working waste. He concluded that the composition of the metal is consistent across all of the samples, and that it includes antimony which would have made it unsuitable for bells. The shapes of some of the mould fragments show that they were for the manufacture of cauldrons and other vessels of this kind. Although a small proportion of the waste still might be the product of bell-founding, the bulk of it shows that Miles Gray made more than simply bells. Finds of bell-founding debris from other places in Britain show the same thing: bell-founders did not necessarily restrict themselves to making bells.

Details of David Dungworth's metallurgical study can be found at

  http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/knowledge/archaeology/sem.asp

We are very grateful to David and English Heritage for their analysis and help.