Holborn Viaduct
London EC1N
UK
Many thousands of visitors to London each year return home thinking that Big Ben is the name of the great clock tower at Westminster. Londoners know that this is the name of the bell. This is a legacy from the Middle Ages when bells had names, ‘tongues’ and ‘mouths’. They could be baptized and might even be taken down, and filled with thorns, as a punishment if they did not ring of their own accord in a time of crisis. Where the bell-towers on the skyline ended, there Christian Europe had its frontiers.
This final lecture of the series, given in the church whose bells are commemorated in nursery rhyme as the ‘bells of the Old Bailey’, will explore the place of the bell tower and its inhabitants in the medieval imagination.
This is a free public lecture by Christopher Page, Gresham Professor of Music.
There is no need to book in advance for this lecture. It runs on a first come first served basis.