Picture this: a seventy-foot battlemented tower where swifts swirl in summer and jackdaws nest in
the arrow-slit windows.

Another door opens. Here is a great wooden wheel, four feet in diameter, sixteen inches across,
studded with brass. There are strange levers and cogs and high above is a maze of iron rods. pulleys
and wires.

You are in the clock chamber of St. Myllin's church in Llanfvllin and the great studded drum is a
carillon. It has been silent for nearly a century.

The six bells that hang in the belfry above the clock chamber are very fine. They were made at the
famous Rudhall's Foundry in Gloucester by Abraham Rudhall, the first and greatest of a long line of
bellfounders. He cast them in 1714 and the local names on the bells show that they were made
especially for St. Myllin's,

A clock was also set up which not only chimed the hours and the quarters but also played a tune
every four hours. It could do this because it was attached to the carillon, which was itself attached by
an elaborate system of rods and wires to the bells above and also to a pulley and a huge stone
pendulum that during the day slowly descended to the floor of the tower far below.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, this might be what happened: at eight in the morning the clock
struck, the pendulum began its slow descent and the carillon started to revolve. The first stud on the
drum forced down one of the row of twelve levers that face it: exactly the same simple mechanism
used in most musical boxes. The wire attached to this lever tugged a hammer next to a bell and the
first note of a tune rang from the belfry high above. Another twenty-seven notes sounded before the
tune was complete and the carillon stopped turning.

At noon the carillon turned again. Levers tilted, hammers met bells. Another twenty-seven notes:

I said that this might be what happened. The truth is that nobody knows. The story is that the end of
the carillon was a malign ripple of the First World War. R.W.Llovd - 'Bobby Watch' - a
watchmaker and bellringer who lived opposite the church - reputedly looked after the carillon until
his death (in Basra in Iraq) in 1916, and thereafter no-one had had the skill or perhaps the heart to
keep the complicated instrument in order. It broke down. was never repaired and now no-one knows
what tunes it played.

If any readers of The Ringing, World would like to try to identify these tunes, the positions of the
studs on the carillon drum can he seen on the North Wales Bellringers Association website
www.northwalesbellringers.org. These are the things to remember: the carillon has 12 rows of studs
that trip 12 levers. The levers were connected to 12 hammers, 2 against each of the 6 bells. The bell
notes, from treble to tenor, are F, E flat, D flat. C, B flat, A flat. The problem is the missing wires
between levers and bells. Which levers rang which bells'? The positions of the levers and the rods
above, suggests that levers 1 and 2 rang the treble, and so on up to 11 and 12 ringing the tenor - but
this isn't certain. Nor is the position of all of the studs: despite our best efforts, a few in each tune
may have been transcribed to the wrong row. We are offering a handsome prize for anyone who can
solve the mystery and tell us what tunes the carillon played. Send your solution to Ron Whatmore at
Canol Aran Bach. Briw. Llangedwyn. Powys, SY10 9LB.

Why not come and see the carillon for yourself? On Saturday October 13th the North Wales
Bellringers Association will be ringing at several local towers near Llanfvllin before coming to ring
in the afternoon on our newly restored bells at St. Myllin's. There will be an exhibition about our bell
restoration and we are also hosting the Liehfield Diocesan Mobile Belfrv in an attempt to encourage
more local ringers. Whether you come to ring. to listen or to examine the carillon, you will be
extremely welcome.