 And to guess, thank you very much, I come to the honour to be able to contribute here today. And I'm glad to be here with this topic, not just here, but this society, but also even more generally in London, because at a time that I'd never set foot in England or in London, it was the need to see the Irish bells in the British Museum and the Wallace Collection that first brought me here in the context of an M.A. thesis that I embarked on in 1979 in Dublin. And as for the society, but just a while later, I was enrolled for a year at University College in James Brown Campbell, the kind of year you had ever an introduction to John Hopkins, whom some of you will remember, and on the strength of that, I've spent many productive hours in the library upstairs. Now, the bells that are my subject today are a medieval insular manifestation of what I suppose is a global phenomenon. I haven't pursued their ultimate origin, although their proximate origin is certainly of interest to us. So, to sum up, then, the sum essentials, these are ecclesiastical handbells, maybe between the 5th and 4th or 6th century and the 12th, and we know that they're ecclesiastical because they're represented occasionally on high crosses because several have been enshrined as relics of the saints, because several have been handed down and continuous by continuous transmission with attributions to the saints, and because there's a wealth of documentary evidence for the context of their production and use. And there are two principal classes, which are those on the screen, what I call classes 1 and 2, class 1 on the left, sheet iron, class 2 on the right of the cast, copper, alloy or bronze for convenience. But we can also isolate four other classes, three, four, five and six, all of them copper, alloy, smaller bells that survive in smaller numbers and are of the 8th, 11th and early 12th century date. Now, these last, the last four classes are Irish only, but classes 1 and 2 are a phenomenon of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, and they're the ones I'll dwell on this evening. Now, I've suggested that these bells span the period between the 5th or 6th century and the 12th, but we can refine this chronology. So class 1 iron bells come first, they continue to be made until it seems around the 10th century and the ending of their production may have coincided with the first instances of enshrinement. And class 2 copper, alloy bells which were never enshrined were certainly made in the 9th century, probably began to be produced in the 8th century and continued to be made until the 12th. Thus, in terms of their production then, the two classes are only partly coincident in time and thus we'll see their life was only partly coincident in space. And class 2 alone is represented on the continent in the form of just four bells that were afforded to Brittany from either Cornwall or Wales. Now, all of these bells, classes 1 and 2, are quadrangular. They have two faces on two sides and they're made to... Class 1, the iron bells were made to a standard design that is consistent throughout the geographical range all the way from the south of Ireland to the north of Scotland. And the key aspects in making the iron bell is that it's always made like this from a single sheet of double trapeze form. It's always symmetrically jointed and by that I mean that the surfaces in one joint are in the same relative position in the other joint. Also, what's downward is the use of about three rivets, typically in each side with disc-like heads and the presence of a handle and suspension loop, made in one piece, the suspension loop for the internal clapper. Likewise, standard is the presence of a copper alloy coated inside and out and evidence for the brazing process, the brazing covering of these bells with copper alloy is now forthcoming from a seventh century context at Plong Fad in County West Meath where numerous pieces of what are called brazing shrouds, vitrified clay envelopes have been found as I say in the seventh century context and some of the bigger and better pieces here are articulated virtually on the screen. And what's on the right is a reverse engineered model of the interior surface created by Gary Devlin of the Discovery Programme and allows you to see an image on the right of the vaged bell and on the right hand side of that image you see the vertical joint on the rivet heads. Class II bells were made by Lost Wax Casting and built the application of the copper alloy to Class I bells and the casting to Class II bells have been replicated very informatively within the last 10 or 15 years. It's arguable, I think, that Class I bells are the most accomplished examples of sheet iron working made in Ireland or Britain in the early Middle Ages bearing in mind that these iron bells the larger ones can be up to 30 centimetres tall sometimes slightly more than that excluding the handles. So that calls for sheets up to 70 centimetres long 35 centimetres wide consistently 4 to 6 millimetres thick and of consistent composition beaten out from a single charge of red hot iron and single operation. And the Class II bells include the largest single castings attempted during the same period specifically these three bronze bells with engraved ornament in 9th century style which, as I mentioned, these three are something in the region of 30 centimetres tall without the handles. Now, as I've said, these bells were easy to ask for and so they fall within a corpus of early medieval metalwork that pre-eminently in Ireland includes things like grozers and book shrines and tomb shaped shrines some of which have been transmitted continuously on broken lines since the 10th century. And on the other hand we can point to a corpus of broadly speaking secular metalwork that includes literally hundreds of broaches for example some of which must have been heirlooms in their day and indeed Geoffrey Keating in the 17th century specifically says that elaborate broaches were transmitted through the lines of Irish kings and no doubt this is factual but all such transmission ended in the Middle Ages and 100% of the corpus of our secular metalwork has been recovered from the ground or from underwater and this is certainly true of Ireland and Scotland and I suspect it applies to these islands overall so the easy ask for them differs essentially from the secular and within the former category the bells have a further distinction apart from the technical distinction of their manufacture but the distinction that they outnumber everything else so we have taken two classes one and two together with 97 of these stands from Ireland 19 from Scotland, six from Wales and two from England both of the English examples being cast on iron bells as well of course as a wealth of evidence for the former existence of several other bells and what's exceptional as well is the nature of the transmission of these things in the many cases in which continuous transmission applies the keepers of bells in Ireland were laterally the descendants of what we call heirloom families the mechanisation of an Irish word that is, these were typically lay holders of the easy ask for the sites and lands who were deprived of tenure at the reformation or the 17th century but who held on to the portable insignia, portable accessories to the coats of medieval saints in Scotland and Wales by contrast of course the acceptance of the reformation by the majority ensured continuity of worship on the ancient sites and continuity of ownership of coat accessories now obviously these were destroyed wholesale when deemed idolatrous or subversive of the new regime but bells in the main escaped this fate they weren't visited with that same appropriate amount so they escaped destruction it's true that in 1536 at Repton and Darmisher the reformation commissioners documented and maybe they destroyed the bell of the mercy in St. Gothlach which the faithful were putting on their heads to cure headaches and in 16th century Lincolnshire sacking bells were both used as animal bells and adapted as mortars but it seems at least in Scotland and Wales that bells being formally innocuous things were retained in churches for the purpose of signalling and funeral accompaniment and I suspect it was funeral accompaniment in particular that was the key factor in ensuring their preservation by tacit consensus and that's a funerary application that finds very late expression here in some tombstones from headstones from Adam and Mum and showing class 2 what I take to be class 2 bronze bells and on otherwise stock mental moory symbols these must have been bells that were famed locally but were certainly of early medieval date it's striking however that several Scottish bells and perhaps one of those in Wales retained their attributions to medieval saints and thus has it come about that early medieval hand bells were typically possession of Catholics that are from Asian Ireland and in three cases are still in Catholic parishes the vast majority of what's being in museums whereas in Wales and Scotland that the property respectively of the representative body of the church in Wales part of the Anglican community and of Presbyterian Catholic sessions now this can't be said of any other category of medieval, early medieval ecclesiastical metal work in these islands that there's this parallel transmission in the three different confessions in other words hand bells have been singled out and if unspoken consensus has been uniquely significant, uniquely hallowed by association and uniquely deserving to be handed down this is exceptional I think in European it's not global terms and if we have very conservatively three generations for every one of the 15th centuries between say the 6th century of the present day that's to recognise the custodial role of 45 generations and the transmission of our oldest iron bells and perhaps 60 generations that's to mark now the subject is long attracted to tension and leaving aside the medieval tradition we find reference to bells as what we would call archaeological objects as early as the 18th century among the first is a record by Richard Pocock of course a fellow of this society who acquired in 1758 a bell found in County Kerry he described it as a hand bell about 15 inches long made of iron riveted together and a copper handle but almost all destroyed with rust and he suggested that it served to ring amongst several duties and this sets a pattern then in that commentators were frequently collectors notably from Ireland Thomas Cook whose collection went to the British Museum, John Bell Scotch by birth his collection on the back to the Antwerp of Scotland and George Petry his collection went to the Royal Irish Academy these and other collectors sometimes of course competed with each other and John Bell as the distinction the very first, the earliest published illustration of an Irish bell in 1815 and George Petry was appointed to the topographical department of the organ survey in 1935 and the field workers of the survey then encountered several bells on their keepers as they traveled around Ireland and the question then arises specifically from Ireland where so many of these bells are preserved why objects for so long jealously guarded were finally relinquished in a short space in such large numbers this is in the 19th century the answer I think must lie largely the cultural dislocation to which Ireland was subject in the 19th century something attributable to starvation disease, emigration, urbanization the accelerative loss of the Irish language and the suppression by a centralising Catholic church of popular devotional observances and the great famine of 1845-52 was of course the great watershed inevitably we can document several instances of people needing to sell the bell that they've kept in order to pay their passage to America that specifically reported the top one bell by William Wild and we can multiply those instances where either starvation or destitution are specifically named as the reason for the selling of the bell out of the keepers hands and furthermore the famine must have undermined also the practice of bell ringing in funerals and further weakened keepers to resolve and in the words again of William Wild writing this time in 1852 he said all domestic usages of life have been outraged an exon just said that even the ceremony of religion has been neglected and the various rites of servitude have been neglected or forgotten the dead body has rotted where a bell has been thrown without prayer or mourning into the adjoining ditch so here then a key factor whereby so many Irish bells left the hands of hereditary keepers entered the cabinets of collectors and then came ultimately into the hands of the professional museum curators now these commentators that I've named were in manner speaking taking up where others had left off and in the 17th century we find the Irish hygiographer writing in Belgium John Colgan writing in Belgium in respectful terms of bells that crop up repeatedly in the lives of the saints that he was collating and the hygiographical tradition goes back at least to the tripartite life of Patrick in the 9th century in which the saint we encountered the saint dispersing devils on Propatricus mountain Cantinaio by throwing his bell and in which we find another bell is advanced as a relic of Saint Patrick but we can go yet further back finding in the 7th century out of non's life of Columba but the bell is not a miracle of our engagement it's straightforwardly an accessory to monastic regulation his references are incidental but in another 7th century text one of the alphabet of piety we find that tardiness at the bell is specified as a breach of monastic discipline so these and several other indicators show that Polcock was right in thinking that in initial terms at least the handbell served to ring the monks to their several duties but this is not something that the Irish invented and we can trace the same usage back at least to the early 6th century in North Africa and Southern Italy on the evidence of a letter written by Farandus of Carthage 2 he recommends what he calls the holy custom of ringing a bell to call for prayers he uses the word campana this is a variation on the regime prescribed in the 4th century rule attributed to the Egyptian Pachomius the famous monastic founder who prescribes the use of a trumpet to call monks from their cells Tuba and Jerusalem's Latin translation and the life of the monastic founder Benedict written around 600 by Gregory the Great mentions a bell this time Tintinabulum tied to a rope by a monk in order to signal the delivery of bread to the same Benedict while he's living in a cave one wonders is this anticipatory of the use of the referee bell which was to become standardised in monastic communities and Benedict himself almost had certainly had bellings in mind when he referred to his own monastic rule to sigma or regulatory sign the standard medieval Latin term and that a stone thrown by a devil breaks Benedict's bell in Gregory's life might also be anticipatory in literary terms of the breaking of Patrick's bell when he throws it at genomic birds on clothed Patrick as recanted in the Drabartite life and as represented in this Italian take on the incident in the 17th century but the bells of early continental monasticism were unprecedented evidence for the most part round section and they were made of copper alloy and although there are a few continental iron bells but I'll come back to there's no evidence that the continental church used iron bells of our class 1 the iron bells of our class 1 are indistinguishable in all their essentials from the iron bells of the Roman provinces including Britain what's on the screen is we can put about 6 or 8 bells found on a board of tools in eastern France of late 4th and early 5th century date they're made exactly as the insular bells are and we can identify several of these from Romano-British sites one of 2nd century date from Carlisle one of 3rd century date from Vindalanda which I think I have an image of and another 4th century date from Made in Castle and another from the Romano-British cemetery on the east side of Chichester and a paper in the most recent Britannia documents a few more Romano-British iron bells these are smaller than the smallest of the insular theses but their adaptation to church use involved nothing more than their enlargement because the morphology of the things is established and my best guess is this adaptation was carried out in Britain specifically in Wales and I point out in that context that the establishment of Irish Christianity was largely through Romano-British influence of which of course Patrick was a prime agent in traditional terms personification Irish monasticism certainly stood in a filial relationship to that of Britain and figures like David and Gildas are remembered as exemplary so it's reasonably to be concluded that the sheet iron bells were necessary to British Christianity specifically British monasticism and the Irish followed British example and the remarkable standardization of insular iron bells throughout their distribution they in consequence be due in part to their very real association with the earliest dates of the church and indeed of what may be a recollection of the ultimate British origin we find in later saints lives the lives of Milaga and made up to Irish saints that they received bells while they were with David in Wales and he endowed them with the bells which they then brought back to Ireland now the continental iron bells are worth a second glance since I mentioned that there are none of insular type now it's not strictly true because there is just one example which is on the screen that from Ramzach and Bavaria but it's not a insular make it's I suspect it's a bell made in Bavaria under insular influence it's attributed to a nominally Irish saint and it seems that it cannot be an export from these islands but it is a continental product the heads of the rivets are the wrong shape for example and there are too many and one or two other technical differences German scholarship concurs and sees this as a one-off product one-off certainly in terms of the surviving evidence otherwise what we have is a disparate group of just three quadrangular iron bells of ecclesiastical origin none of which matches another the three are from Neuhaus in northern France from Nassau in Belgium and from St Gallen in Switzerland I won't dwell on them but just to give you a flavour so the Neuhaus bell is quadrangular alright but it's riveted not in this size it's riveted on the faces and of course we have here multiple riveting which we never have in the insular iron bells and in St Gallen yes really riveted on the sides alright but again we have multiple riveting which we wouldn't have in the insular series and as you can see from the plan section of the bell is almost open and as our bells are quadrangular now fourth bell from Cologne in Germany it is related to these but it's an octagonal in the plan what's the clearest in the view from below on the right hand side this is a master piece of blacksmithing made from three separate sheets scarcely to be called a hand bell it's maybe 38-40cm high and rather heavy and it's evidently the counter part of a cast copper alloy bell bearing in mind that the faceted elevation you see there in this bell it's the counter part of this cast copper alloy bell designed for suspension in the Pacific of San Zeno in Verona this last there's infinite evidence this dates to the 11th century and I think the same date can apply to the bell in Cologne so for lack of evidence then the adaptation of the provincial Roman iron bell to the ecclesiastical use can't be attributed to continental churches but it can reasonably be attributed to British monastic community since Britain alone has bells of both categories I think this was an insular answer to the need for bells and the continental bells took other forms and what they look like is suggested by this unique surviving example with 10th century inscription from Cordoba and by fragments from 9th and 10th century context from Hedibi in North Germany the largest of the bells at Hedibi about 11cm in diameter of the mouth and Hans Drescher has suggested that it might have approximated in shape and in size to those depicted on the Bayer Tapestry now all of these are admittedly late and I will argue that small bells of hemispherical and half ovoid form made of cast copper alloy were a continental standard from the time of Ferrandus and Benedict in the 6th century and they were adapted from provincial Roman bells of the same shape and the same material and there are plenty of them now given that I'm standing here I'd better say something of the English bells that I mentioned there are only two of these one an absolute outlier like the others from Margin and Hereford here just to the north of Hereford the more plate bell might have been of a guess the possession of Irish or Welsh heritage in transit and the Margin bell found within a few miles of the border mark by the why can be associated with the Welsh distribution but given my argument for British priority in making of Class 1 bells it would be fair to say what I mean by the Welsh distributions but it's similar on the map that's number 77 I think in Breckinshire the neighbouring one in the south east of Wales the neighbouring is similar on the map as for Margin and Hereford so where are these Welsh bells I'd answer with the distribution of lost Welsh bells of which there are 19 examples that were certainly or probably quadrangular and many of which can at least be identified by material eight were certainly or probably of copper, alloy and two of them found together on Anglesey in the 19th century were certainly of iron but that leaves another nine that might have been of iron and that might make up the disparity in the extent distribution of Welsh bells and the lost distribution incidentally is of interest for its coastal concentration on the presence of just one bell I'll write two on the Anglo-Saxon iron bells as appropriate here first of all there are relatively few in number from Anglo-Saxon context and as a rule they're even smaller than the smallest of the class one ecclesiastical bells and those, for example, from burials at Lechlate and Kingston down were probably, I think, of non-Christian talismanic significance these from burials and equally small bells from Asby, Winterbath and Cumbria and ten towards a round and very rounded at the mouth and this is also true of three larger bells that are more relevant to us from Tarasulthorpe, Flixborough and Repton, again, that might be argued by some to the ecclesiastical bells although I don't believe they were Tarasulthorpe belongs to a suite of great goods and that's taken to be the burial of a smith that Flixborough found with important tools and the Repton bell found in an almost workshop context in what had been a mortuary chapel but a space that was then cut down to serve as a viking age burial chamber and what's more Tarasulthorpe and Flixborough are reinforced at the lift by clenched moldings which our class one bells never are and that from Flixborough uniquely in this discussion is asymmetrically jointed so the Flixborough bell falls out with the class one definition for that reason and what's more, Flixborough and Repton both are closed but joined by a single rhythm close to the lip whereas two or three rivets are standard in our class one bells of similar size so and to be added into this into weighing all this up is the fact that no class one bell as a sort of exception of Martin has ever been found in an ecclesiastical context in England and during grafting from early medieval sites that go back to early medieval origin which is a standard kind of fine circumstance for Ireland and Scotland and when we do find a bell attributed to a saint being specifically described we find that it's made of copper alloy and that it's round section and I'm referring to the bell ascribed to Cuthbert who was preserved in Durban as the subject of an 1800 word allegorical description by Reginald of Durban from 18th to 12th century and as for the other lost English bells Guthflex was probably a bronze and round section but the rest were presumably quadrangular can I go back to that presumably quadrangular and made of either iron or copper alloy one which you can see in the vicinity of Glastonbury is a bell preserved at Beccary just beside the astro roots of and preserved as a relic of the Irish saint Bridget described by William of Moms from the early 12th century and the other three in Cornwall by being located there are extraneous to the Anglo-Saxon world and I take them to be continuous with the Welsh and the Breton distribution so I conclude then the last one bell was emblematic of British Atheism organization and didn't find favour in early Christian England and Beed describes the British defeat by a pagan Anglo-Saxon king at the Battle of Chester around 1615 he describes it as the fulfillment of a prophecy made by Guston that if the British refused to preach to the English the way of life they would eventually suffer at their hands the penalty of death and Beed tells us that the British were supported by the monastic community of banger on Dean Flintshire and that the monks who had kept it three days fast had gathered to pray at the battle now since Sam singing and fasting by way of sanction are routinely coupled with bell ringing in Irish sources it would be a fair guess I think but the monks of banger on Dean rang iron handbells at the Battle of Chester their associations might be a little more negative if the smaller but similar belles that were secreted in Anglo-Saxon graves had had a pagan talismanic significance and as for what the Anglo-Saxon church used instead it must be continental style half of white and hemispherical bronze belles like that one Beed who says that bell ringing it would be was miraculously heard at Hackness which is about 12 miles inland of there he also has other things to say that are relevant in this context in his commentary on the tabernacle Beed remarks on the resident and vocal qualities of bronze in his day-templo he says exactly the same thing and then goes on for other oracle purposes to mention the practicalities of casting of casting the vessels of the lord's house and he uses the generic term vasa for these vessels but he obviously is very familiar with the process of casting and breaking open the mold to free the piece within and although it's a generic vasa as it happens is used by Walliford Strabo in the century later with specific reference to bells so class 1 then a phenomenon at the Institute of Celtic Speaking Church and I'll just look on now to say something about distributions what we have in Ireland as you can see on the screen is a pronounced midland concentration the north is not quite as thin as it is in this image as much as there are four unprovenance bells and John bells on Ganon County to Rome four unprovenance iron bells must come from somewhere in the north so we have then a reasonable north and showing on a very marked midland concentration and a marked absence in Munster the southern province like by south Lenster being largely blank and when we map the lost bells we find that this pattern is merely intensified and looking at the class 2 bronze bells we find that we have a northern concentration and that County to Rome not that the counties matter but County to Rome in the middle of Ulster four bronze bells and any other Irish county and bronze bells are largely absent outside the north putting these two together difficult to know what to make of them what I would suggest is that if we look at what the Irish, the character of the Irish midlands in the relevant period we can maybe look at or identify a difference in context we have a chronological distinction so class 1 then are concentrated in the midland counties which is the late Francis John Byrne the flowering garden of monasteries and he also remarked on the number of churches found in the midland counties of Ireland by its saints of west Munster origin and others of northern origin are also said to have been found in the midland churches including from which we have the bracing evidence bracing iron bells so then in other words we have evidence that this is an area of monastic specialisation and the bells could be if you like an index of this Gallon in County Offaly is Gallon of the Britons to give it its full name the northern churches from which most of the bronze bells come some of them we know in the later middle ages of parish churches none of them are great monastic centuries however you might define that term for the earlier period I would posit that they are perhaps to be associated with equipping or re-equipping churches that were incipient parish churches and this was carried out as an Arma initiative because this is very much the hinter in the Arma we are seeing in the right hand image Arma is just south of Loch Naye there at the top right of the map of Ireland so in other words this is to allow that they had a liturgical function of the laity and that Arma was equipping from its own workshops some of these churches and the output of specific workshops is represented so we can envisage distribution from them the population group from which many of the office holders in Arma were drawn it was also from this population that a certain Commascus something added was drawn in Arma who died in year 999 he had his death recorded in the annals his name is written on this bell this very much brings Bronzebell making straight into the Arma context and as I say this man is of the population who were major players in Arma politics the production of these bells is unlikely to have risen independently in Wales so I think that the distribution in Wales, Scotland, Brittany is ultimately ultimately traced to 8th century Arma for Scotland we have a smaller number but you can see that the Iron Bells on the left hand side are more widely distributed all the way from the borders to the Orkneys the Bronzebells were restricted between the 4th Clyde line and the Great Lent almost as one that creeps over the Great Lent to Loch Shield what they were I think that the Iron Bells can be explained for Scotland in the same way as they are for Ireland but there are some accessories to monastic to them keeping them in regulation and we have three notably in Perth, Sheer and Glen Lyon one of them Fortingale stole them just over a year and a half ago but from a most interesting area that is rich with associations with Iona Personnel and Fortingale itself from which the bell was taken is wrapped around by a rectilinear enclosure our 7th century date corresponds nicely to the enclosure on Iona so it's as though we have here particularly in Perth, sheer in this area evidence for the monastic houses that Athenan says but it doesn't name when he says they were founded from Iona among the pits and as for Wales we have a cluster in the north the cluster in the north is all of the Bronzebells, Class II Bells and I think for reasons of looking at each of them individually I think all of them were made in Ireland just one example from the theme peninsula I can't find one out of it now in Cardiff we have animal head terminals on the handle here which correspond very closely to the kind of animal head terminal we have on certain Irish bells but I should have initially that are of late 11th and early 12th century date but we can't say that because these five happened to be made in Ireland we can't say that there was no native Welsh Bronzebell making industry we have in the book of Flanda the miracle of Vildoglu saying that he made a bell from the trans-mutant butter and as Mark Brithnach pointed out suggests either lost wax casting or molten raw material at the very least and because we have two of these bells in the theme peninsula a suspected connection with the pilgrimage traffic to Vardsley and then a word on enshrinement very quickly we have two different kinds we have attachment directly to the body of the bell as here and this is one plate on this bell in Blue's Museum but of course there was a second now lost and we have this is of 10th century date and it's our earliest certain example of enshrinement in this form where metal mounts are attached directly to the body of the bell we have other fragments about this same period but we can't be certain precisely what kind of shrine they relate to because the shrine can consist of plates directly riveted to the bell or a container made to house the bell so we can then define the two types as applied or autonomous so there are two completely distinct forms of enshrinement so on the screen at the moment that's an applied shrine another applied shrine is the other British Museum example from the Countess de Bréry made in the late 11th or early 12th century and the other kind is the autonomous and this is our earliest certain example made to house St Patrick's bell around the year 1100 this time dated securely by inscription to about that year and as you say we have other fragments but whether to assign it's not certain whether they belong to applied or autonomous shrines so it may well be that this autonomous shrine is the earliest one in absolute terms and it's the one from which all other autonomous shrines derive and because it's an ARMA product it's all the more likely that innovation and initiative should be centered there and as we have another couple of images of that but then the shrine and the bell therefore is still available for use if need arises that's how it functions the hole in the base plate hasn't been made by the clapper and then another detail of this ARMA project around the year 1100 just to point out that the stone on the right, the red stone on the right in its gold cloth setting one of the best preserved on the face of this shrine allows us an insight into the nature of the workshop and perhaps the treasury of ARMA around the year 1100 because this stone and all its counter parts and a little closer made an ARMA stud at the top of this shrine are from some elaborate piece of autonomy and mental work of the 11th century something like this cross at Osingbrook they're certainly not a virus fake and so they have been applied as part of the primary making they're part of the shrine's impact to its bell so as I said there is potentially a relative terminology that the applied shrines come first and the autonomous shrines come second why iron bells only and why not bronze it might be that enshrinement was straightforwardly the creative adaptation to cult purposes of bells that were super annuated they couldn't be used for anything else it might be that bronze bells by the capacity to endure uncrowded seemed unlikely relics in the period of their production and even in the centuries thereafter but I think what was perhaps the key factor was a real collective sense a real recollection the iron bells were indeed the older type and were accessories to the lives of the great monastic founders even if as I believe they were originally communally owned rather than personally now a seeming exception must be mentioned finally as it's quite famous and it's in the Wallace Collection here in London this is the bell from Fawn in a show in a canted Dundee ball looking at first sight like a class 2 bronze bell that's been enshrined though in my view that's not what it is I can show you this a radiograph one of several produced for the Wallace Collection by the Tower Armouries kindly made available to me by Jeremy Warren it shows you an unblemished top to the bell and it's interrupted only by an integral upright projection something designed from by the original maker to anchor the decorated crest like handle the handle then afterwards itself encased in the later Middle Ages so the bell in other words is contemporary entirely with the handle and the other mounts that are in exactly the same late 11th century style and we find I haven't got an image but we find that there's a major casting flaw as well on the inside of this bell from Fawn and that the mounts on the surface actually serve secondly cosmetically to conceal that imperfection and we find that we have others nothing as elaborate as that from Fawn but this one from Kilmah-Dewitt is I would say the same thing in simpler terms it's a bell that's made to look as though it has a pique mounts and little collets it has collets to take some kind of decorative inlay but it's all obviously made of a piece what might be given rise to them was of course the prestige of the Trimes Bell Trimes but also I suppose the need to furnish all terms and tunes with a view to the promotion of pilgrimage there would have been many factors but those are perhaps some of the main ones so I hope I've sketched then adequately the exceptional nature of these bells as artifacts and as the focus of investment both material and otherwise throughout the Spanish and Middle Ages and beyond the subject as I've hinted it ramifies in all kinds of directions that I haven't covered this evening bells made by tradition at least by famous and very saintly people bells used in church consecration in healing and as receptacles in baptism bells swore upon them to carry it into battle as talismans questions of iconography and archaeological context including burial as grave furniture and open air preservation the terminology that applies in Latin and the vernaculars and the proper names in these several languages that were attached to bells and that reflect both popular perception and popular reception there are particular interests of mine so let me just mention that I've documented 84 of them there are 84 such proper names that barnon which means gapped one or gapped bell is the commonest name appears nine times of that 84 and my guess again is that barnon the barnon attributed to Saint Patrick was the archetype for all the others that in other words the name acquired prestige without association with his name but to re-emphasize the long continuities that apply let me leave you with two images this is an image from a 15th century mural in the parish church of Stilal in Brittany showing St. Mary a deck he's administering a cure by placing the bell on someone's head and here at Julien not too many miles away we have this same practice continuing at the present today I think perhaps that's enough thank you very much indeed