The Olympic Bell was made by Whitechapel Bell Foundry, whose workshop is just a few miles from the Stadium, and measures two metres by three metres.
Founded in 1570, during the reign of Elizabeth I, it’s probably the oldest manufacturing company in the world. The Foundry also created the Liberty Bell (in 1752) and Big Ben (1858). The Olympic Bell will hang in the Olympic Park for the next 200 years. Why only 200? Because then it will have to be taken back to Whitechapel to be retuned. It’s already in their diary
The Olympic Bell
is the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world and was made by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, whose workshop is just a few miles from the Stadium.
1570
The year the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was founded, making it the oldest manufacturing company in the world.
23 tonnes
the weight of the 2m x 3m Olympic Bell.
The Olympic Bell
The Olympic Bell
Article
The Shipping Forecast
The Shipping Forecast
The Shipping Forecast is broadcast four times a day on BBC Radio. Designed to be useful for sailors, it has a strange poetry of its own and has become a kind of national litany.
As we wake or as we’re about to sleep, it walks us name by name around the limits of our islands.
Article
Prayer, Carol Ann Duffy
Prayer, Carol Ann Duffy
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child’s name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer – Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
Prayer, Carol Ann Duffy
Article
The countdown to the start of the Ceremony begins…
Bells ring out the changes of our days. They call us to wake, to pray, to work, to arms, to feast and, in times of crisis, to come together. Almost everyone in Britain lives within a sonic parish. Anyone born within hearing of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, London, has the right to call themselves ‘cockney’.
The art of ringing bells in complex mathematical patterns is called ‘change ringing’. The sheets on which the changes are worked out are said to be the first computer programmes.
Tonight you’ll hear the sound of the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world – the Olympic Bell. Above all, bells are the sound of freedom and peace. Throughout World War II all of Britain’s bell towers were stilled, to be rung only in case of emergency. They hung in dusty silence until the day came when they could ring in the peace.
The art of ringing bells in complex mathematical patterns is called ‘change ringing’. The sheets on which the changes are worked out are said to be the first computer programmes.
Tonight you’ll hear the sound of the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world – the Olympic Bell. Above all, bells are the sound of freedom and peace. Throughout World War II all of Britain’s bell towers were stilled, to be rung only in case of emergency. They hung in dusty silence until the day came when they could ring in the peace.