What have Vancouver, Sydney and the small Hampshire village of Crondall in common? The answer is that all have churches where former Trinity House buoy bells are about to begin a new lease of life. The story starts in the latter part of the 19^th Century when bell-founders started casting bells for TH. Two bells weighing over two tons each were cast in 1881 by Gillett & Johnston for the Eddystone Lighthouse.  Foundry records show that large numbers of bells weighing approximately 3 cwt. (150kg) were cast for use in buoys by TH and other organizations

including the Humber Conservancy Board and the Gas Accumulator Co. Ltd. of Brentford, Middlesex. Contracts to supply batches of buoy bells were put out to tender; the successful bell-founders being Taylor's of Loughborough, Mears & Stainbank (now the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) of Whitechapel, Warner's of Cripplegate and Gillett & Johnston of Croydon.
In the latter part of the 19^th Century subtle changes to the shape of a bell coupled with the use of vertical boring lathes allowed some bell-founders to produce more tuneful bells. These are commonly referred to as true harmonic tuned bells or Simpson tuned bells after Canon Simpson who in 1897 wrote one of the first papers on bell-tuning. Even to this day arguments exist as to who was the first to advocate the change to true harmonic tuning; was it Canon Simpson or John William Taylor of Taylor's who in the 1890's had been experiment

ing with slightly different bell shapes after taking detailed measurements of fine sounding bells cast by the Dutch bell-founders Francois and Pieter Hemony in the 17^th Century. What is agreed is that commercial sensitivities meant that Taylor's were reticent about releasing information that could have benefited their competitors.

It took until 1906 before a competitor caught Taylor's lead and it was Cyril Johnston of Gillett & Johnston who exploited True Harmonic tuning for buoy bells; he theorized that they had greater carrying power then their predecessors. His company cast experimental bells for TH to prove his theory.  A tale that has passed into bell-founding folklore is shortly after the Great War, Cyril Johnston persuaded the TH authorities to arrange a trial whereby two buoy bells were moored a mile apart, one being a standard buoy bell cast by Warner's and the other an experimental Gillett & Johnston bell tuned to the True Harmonic principle. Observers on a launch moved away from the bells until only one could be heard and of course it was the Gillett & Johnston bell. Presumably as a result of this trial TH produced a specification and drawings for the "improved" buoy bell. This included the now familiar flange top for securing the bell also enabling easy rotation when in place on the buoy allowing the hammers to strike on un-worn surfaces.

Over time severe weather conditions and repetitive hammer strikes caused damage to buoy bells. Batches of damaged or worn bells were regularly returned to the bell foundries for recasting into replacements. However advances in technology are making the humble buoy bell redundant and the last batch of bells was cast in 1977 by Taylor's. More recently many bell buoys have been replaced with state-of-the-art technology and the surplus bells sold for scrap.

Over the last half century many churches have been declared redundant throughout the UK; some are found alternative uses and some are demolished. Many bells were scrapped with only a precious few being relocated in other churches. The lack of information regarding availability of redundant bells and the long time needed by church authorities to raise funds and gain the necessary approval for installation prevented many more from being re-used.

A small group of people set about to tackle these problems and after the success of a pilot project, application was made to the Charity Commissioners in 1997 to register the operation as a charity and so the Keltek Trust was born. We established a Bell Rescue Fund to buy bells at risk and to offer them to churches at cost price; church authorities re-paying the Trust when sufficient funds had been raised, often after several years. 2002 was the Trust's most successful year to date when over 40 bells were re-located. However this total will almost certainly be exceeded in 2003 owing to the availability of surplus buoy bells. An inspection earlier this year of the first batch of