LAST Thursday was one of the most memorable days I have ever spent. A party of us from St Michael’s Church, Cornhill, in the City of London, went to visit Taylor’s bell foundry in Loughborough to see our new ring of bells in the making.

From the high gantry, we watched as the molten metal was carried serenely by the craftsmen from the furnace to the bell mould.

It seemed almost a ritual, an almost mystical act. And the managing director of the company did not disillusion me.

He said: “We are into deep things here.

Ancient technology going back to the Iron Age.”

John Taylor and Co continues a line of bellfounding which has been unbroken since the middle the 14th Century, when the legendary founder Johannes de Stafford was active only ten miles from the site of the present foundry.

Since 1784, the business has been in the hands of the Taylor family. In 1839, the firm settled in Loughborough and is now proud to operate the largest bell foundry in the world.

Perhaps the foundry’s greatest claim to fame was its discovery of harmonic tuning.

Until the end of the 19th century, church bells were tuned “old style” which meant that the tuning of a particular bell was not quite in harmony with others in the same peel of, say, 12.

Taylor’s craftsmen mastered the art and science of clipping tiny fragments of bell metal from just the right places in the bells so that they achieved a perfectly harmonic tune. Other foundries all over the world quickly copied this innovative method.

Our present ring of 12 bells at St Michael’s is old style and not very distinguished. One ringer cruelly said: “St Michael’s bells sound like someone throwing scaffolding poles into the street.”

Three of the old bells date from 1728, but the others are a hybrid lot. Imagine the delight on the faces of the rector and churchwardens then when, a few years ago, a benefactor, himself a ringer, came forward and declared he would like to present the church with 12 new bells. The formal legal processes in such historic matters grind extremely slowly and it was only at the end of last year that we received all the necessary permissions from the various heritage bodies and the Chancellor of the Diocese of London gave his legal faculty for the works to proceed.

The whole day in Loughborough was thrilling. We were taken around the Taylor’s museum and saw and heard bells dating from the 14th Century. We saw our own new bells which had just been cast, inscribed inside with texts from The Book of Common Prayer.

It was more than enough to blow all our minds when we learnt that the largest of our 12 new bells would be one-and-a-half tons.

Most impressive was the calm artistry of the three founders going about their work with colossal amounts of expertise, a thorough understanding of the traditions of their trade and a dignity and sense of reverence for what they were doing.

Most encouraging was the fact that they were assisted by a young apprentice. So we know there are men coming forward to continue the craft. What a treat for the parish trippers – that and a pub lunch, too. Now we are awaiting April 3, when the Bishop of London has promised to come and consecrate our new ring.