Dove has improved the way it displays the date of a bell and we are asking contributors to be mindful of how to submit estimated dates. Where a bell is undated, Dove now gives the understood founder’s period of activity. Therefore, when submitting an estimated date for a bell, please don’t provide anything outside the given founder’s period of activity, or at least specifically alert us if you believe the period needs correcting.
By way of background, when there is no date on the bell and the date of casting is not known, we have to resort to records to find or estimate the date. Where there are no records and no estimate, judgements need to be made based on information that IS known, such as the founder. Research sometimes tells us the period over which a founder was active. In that instance, Dove now shows the whole period rather than an estimated individual date. On devices that support hover text, you’ll see the description Founder’s period of activity; no better estimate of the date. When the identity of a founder is unknown, or their periods of activity are unknown, we continue to rely on the estimate of expert antiquarians, references to which are being collected. When all else fails, after a particular bell has been examined by suitable persons without any conclusion, it is marked n/d (not dated).
Where a bell just shows a founders period of activity, or a provisional estimate, there remains scope for these data to be the subject of research, which we encourage people to do. Dove still holds a large number of bells (circa 2,400) with estimated cast dates which may be better reflected with their founders periods of activity. It will take some time for the team to go through all of these, but is a project that the team is tackling.
