see · great bell bells bell-ringer eight thirty-six tower
volume i · pages 440–442 · ed. l. m.
a brief account of the bell's metallurgical history; three founders, three voices, one rope.
The bell presently hanging in the tower of the labyrinth is the third of its name. The two earlier bells, both of which were called the great bell in their day, hang elsewhere: the first in the parish church of the lowlands, the second on the floor of the harbour. The present entry describes the three castings, with what is known of each, what is suspected, and what has had to be reconstructed from the keeper's diary and the founders' guild-marks.
The first casting · 1442 · founder unknown. The first great bell was cast on the meadow below the present site; the casting-pit can still be traced in summer, as a long oval of grass that grows darker than the field around it. The bell weighed an estimated three tons and was tuned to a low B-flat. It was rung for two centuries without complaint and then, in 1689, lowered to make way for the second bell. It now hangs in the lowland church, where it is rung at funerals only, by tradition; the parishioners say its voice is "the older voice" and remark on no other quality.
The second casting · 1689 · van den gheyn of louvain. The second bell was cast at the founders' yard of van den gheyn, of louvain, in the spring of 1689. It weighed five tons and was tuned to a low G. Its inscription read: vox sum, non sermo — I am a voice, not a speech. It was rung for two hundred and twelve years and then lost from the tower in 1901, in circumstances that the building's records describe as "an accident of weather". The bell was recovered from the harbour in 1903 and was deemed too damaged to rehang. It is now visible only at low tide, at the head of the western quay, the inscription still legible.
The third casting · 1903 · van den gheyn (re-cast). The third and present bell was cast from the metal of the second by the same firm; the founder of the second casting was the grandfather of the founder of the third. The bell weighs four and three-quarter tons (slightly less than the second, because some of the bronze was lost to the harbour). It is tuned almost to a low G, but flat by approximately a quarter-tone. The flatness is not corrected; it is the present bell's voice.
The bell is rung four times in the year and once in error. The four times are: the longest night, the shortest, the day of letters, and the keeper's birthday, the date of which is not known. The error has occurred eleven times in the last century; on six of these occasions, no one is recorded as having pulled the rope.