The bells of Shandon were cast by Abel Rudhall of Gloucester in 1750, and have been recast twice since in first in 1869 and again in 1908.
They first rang out on the occasion of the marriage of Henry Harding to Catherine Dornan on the 7th December 1752.
The original inscriptions are retained on each bell:
- When us you ring we’ll sweetly sing
- God preserve the Church and King
- Health and prosperity to all our benefactors
- Peace and good neighbourhood
- Prosperity to the city and trade thereof
- We were all cast at Gloucester in England by Abel Rudhall 1750
- Since generosity has opened our mouths our tongues shall sing aloud its praise
- I to the Church the living call and to the grave do summon all
The bells weigh over 6 tonnes altogether (which is approximately the size of 2 elephants!) The bells are rung on a fixed bells system called an ‘Ellacombe’ system. The bell remains static and when you pull the rope, the clapper hits the bell.
The bells were immortalised by writer Francis Sylvester Mahony, also also known by his pen-name of ‘Father Prout (pictured right)’, who penned the well known verses, ‘The Bells of Shandon’. Father Mahony is buried in the graveyard of St Anne’s.
The belfry of St Anne’s has four clocks, one on each side, each of them 14 feet in diameter. The clocks were erected for the citizens of Cork by Cork Corporation in 1847 and were supplied by Mangan’s of Cork. The clocks continue to be maintained by Cork City Council.
One of the clocks is inscribed with the following epigraph:
Passenger measure your time, for time is the measure of being.
The clocks are collectively known to locals as the ‘four-faced liar’ as each side of the clock can give a slightly different time due to high winds affecting the movement of the clocks hands. Cork City Council commissioned a horologist to repair the 160-year-old clock mechanisms in summer 2014, and the clocks began functioning again on 2 September 2014 after they had stopped indicating the time for two years before that date.