" GREAT TOM " OF OXFORD
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sut,—Can any reader of the Spectator tell me what became of this notable bell during the period (roughly• speaking a century and a half) which elapsed between its removal from Osney Abbey, aft& the final suppression of that famous religious louse in 1546, to Christ' Church, and the time at which it was hung in its present position over the " Fayre Gate " of Christ Church ? I assume that the latter event did not take place until Wren completed the tower in 1682. Where was the bell hung or deposited in the interval ? Mr. J. Meade Falkner in his History of Oxfordshire quotes on page 291 an extract from Thomas Hearne's Diary in which Hearne describes a peal rung by a party of London ringers. Hearne states that " the gudgeons being bad, the biggest bell [i.e., the tenth] fell down, but not through the loft." The peal consequently failed. Mr. Meade Falkner appends a note to this extract that " this was Great Tom, which had been recast in 1680 on the completion of the tower." I cannot conceive, however, that a bell of this weight could have been rung in the ordinary way in a peal, which, I assume, then hung in the-cathedral tower. Was Tom ever hung in that tower or elsewhere before it was hung in Wren's tower ?
In I3ereblock's sketch of Christ Church shown to Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Oxford in 1564, a tower of some kind over the staircase to the hall is depicted. I have never met with any description of this tower or any account of its removal. It occupied the position of the present bell tower, which was erected to receive the cathedral bells when or shortly after that cathedral was restored in the 'seventies of last century. The bells were for some years housed in a temporary wooden erection, rudely known as the " meat safe," until the permanent tower could be completed in the same position.—I am, Sir, &c., T. W. H. Union Society, Oxford.
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