Organ The earliest record of an organ at St Mary Redcliffe is when a new instrument by John Harris and
John Byfield was installed in the church in 1726. This organ was one of the largest of its time, featuring three
manuals and 26
stops, located on a new western gallery in the nave. This organ was rebuilt by John Smith of Bristol in 1829 and then completely altered by
W. G. Vowles, also of Bristol, in 1867, when it was enlarged, rebuilt and reinstalled in the chancel. The 1867 organ kept the three manuals, but had an increased number of stops, 33 in number. From 1910 to 1912, organ builders Harrison & Harrison of Durham built and installed a brand new organ for the church, incorporating a small amount of the old pipework. The new organ was much larger, and due to space constraints had to be split between the north and south walls of the chancel. A new stone chamber for the
Swell Organ was built in the angle between the north transept and north chancel aisle. The Great Organ was placed on the north side of the chancel with the remaining parts on the south; the console being placed to the west, near the north transept. This organ had more than twice as many stops as the previous organs, a total of 68 as installed. In 1941, the Swell Organ was affected by fire and bomb damage and had to be rebuilt in 1947 by Harrison & Harrison with additional pipes. The organ was cleaned and overhauled in 1974 and 1990 with tonal alterations, new equipment and additional stops; two stops were also removed. The 1990 work was never completely satisfactory, and so when the organ approached its next restoration in the early 2000s, a part of the project involved correcting errors from the 1990 overhaul. making it amongst the largest organs in Southern England. The organ is very well thought of for the quality of its tone, ranking amongst the finest organs in the country.
Bells Early bells The earliest record of bells at Redcliffe is in 1480, where a very large peal of six are recorded. The founders were not known, as only the number of bells was recorded by William Worcestre. It is known from the churchwarden's accounts, that the 4th bell was recast by William Jeffers in 1572, and the 5th and 6th by Roger Purdue in 1622. Purdue's tenor was recorded as weighing 42 long
hundredweight (cwt) 0 qrs 27 lbs (2,150 kg or 4,731 lb). In 1698,
Abel Rudhall of
Gloucester augmented the ring of six to eight with two new treble bells. No further work is recorded until 1763, when Thomas Bilbie recast the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th of the eight. The
Bilbie family, like the Purdue family, were a prolific
West Country foundry; 734 of their bells survive today. Curiously, Bilbie had to guarantee the recast bells were at least as heavy as the bells they replaced; if they were not, he had to pay 1
shilling per pound of reduced metal.
19th century augmentation In 1823, the bells were augmented to ten with two trebles cast by Thomas Mears II of
Whitechapel, though the first peal on the ten would not follow until 1835. The bells were augmented to twelve in 1872 by Mears' successors,
Mears & Stainbank. The augmented bells were the third ring of twelve in the West Country, following
Cirencester in 1722 and
Painswick in 1821, and the 25th ring of twelve in the country. The bells, the frame and the fittings left Bristol for Loughborough in the early months of 1903. The bells were all weighed upon their arrival, where the tenor was found to be only 39 long cwt (4,368 kg), over half a tonne lighter than reputed, which then explained how the peal in 1899 was faster than many thought possible. The lightest seven and the tenor bell were broken up and recast with additional metal, and the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th bells had their canons (ornamental loops of bell metal previously used for attaching bells to their headstocks) removed. The bells were also retuned, the combined action of both removing the canons and retuning reducing the weight of each of these four bells by approximately 2 long cwt (225 kg). The 9th bell, however, for a reason that is unknown was recast later in the same year; according to legend this is because the railway company dropped the 9th on the return to Bristol, and it had to be recast. The logbook housed in the archives at John Taylor & Co's Loughborough foundry shows the arrival weight and post-tuning weights of the former 9th crossed through and a new, heavier weight recorded underneath. When the bells were installed, the new heavier tenor, which weighed 50 long cwt 2 qrs 21 lbs (5,677 lb or 2,575 kg), These new ball bearings no longer required regular greasing, unlike the old plain type of bearings and were also self-aligning.
Since World War II In the spring of 1941, following damage by
Second World War bombing to many towers in London, including the destruction of the ring of twelve at
St Mary-le-Bow, the church removed the bells from the tower and kept them in the undercroft underneath sandbags. The bells were returned to the tower and rehung in November 1944, also by Taylor's. In 1951, the 13th bell that Taylor's had left the space for in 1903 was ordered, being cast at Loughborough as with the other bells. This bell, called a flat sixth, occupied the position in the frame between the sixth and seventh bells and was used to provide a lighter ring of eight, when bells two to nine are rung with the flat sixth replacing the normal sixth. The ninth weighs 19 long cwt 3 qrs 1 lb (2,213 lb or 1,004 kg), The new bell was cast to celebrate the
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and following its tuning, it weighed some 15 and a half cwt (790 kg), The bells are considered one of the finest rings of bells in existence, with visiting bands of ringers coming from across the
British Isles and beyond to ring them. There have been more than 300 full peals rung on the bells since the first in 1768; the St Mary Redcliffe Guild of Ringers attempts several full peals on the bells a year, normally to mark national events, most recently, the
State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. == Location and precincts ==