Hervey Bagot the bell master for Australia from 1977; honing the harmonics of Adelaide's most famous chimes
Hervey Bagot's projects beyond South Australia included the before of Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo, in 2001: a five -bell “Salve Regina” swinging peal in the European style, it was the heaviest and deepest-toned of its kind in Australia.
Hervey (Charles) Bagot became Australia’s only bell smith, bringing his profound skill and knowledge to designing the right harmonics for the chimes og some of Adelaide city’s most famous buildings along with many interstate.
Born in Adelaide in 1934, Bagot was named Charles Hervey after his ancestor who was one of the first discoverers of copper in Kapunda in South Australia's mid north and owned the first copper mine in Australia.
Bagot’s passion for ringing bells began as a teenager at St Andrew’s Anglican Church in the Adelaide inner suburb of Walkerville. He later became captain of the bell ringing team of St Peter's Cathedral in North Adelaide (1958-60) and president of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Bell Ringers in 1965.
Bagot built scientific knowledge with a masters degree, majoring in physics, from Adelaide University, followed by seven years as an editor of physics and scientific papers at the CSIRO (commonwealth scientific industrial research organisation) in Melbourne and at the Institute of Physics Publishing in the United Kingdom.
Bagot brought a keen musical ear, engineering skills and a knowledge of metallurgy to his Bagot Bell in North Adelaide, from 1977, the longest-established bell business in Australia for the next four decades. Bagot made some bell patterns (first tuned bell created in 1981) and designed and built most ancillary bell frames and accessories in Adelaide, while obtaining other bells from carefully selected European (often Dutch) sources. Bagot also planned and completed installing and maintaining the bells.
Hervey worked on such distinctive chimes from the Albert Tower at Adelaide Town Hall, the Adelaide general post office and Adelaide’s St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral – his favourite 13-bells installation, that won an award from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. As Australia's onlv full-time bell founder and installer for many years, Bagot travelled regularly throughout Australia and the Pacific, making and maintaining bells, including those at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Sacred Heart Cathedral in Bendigo and several churches in Tonga.
Careful tuning of the bells was crucial for Bagot.. He resonated a bell's five harmonic tones, then shaved off about a millimetre at a time until the sound was right: "The weight and size of a bell tells you what its sound power is, it needs to have sufficient mass to be heard over a vast distance and you must tune it to a particular note." Hervey invented many distinct bell patterns heard across Adelaide and the rest of South Australia.
Bagot wrote several publications extolling the 24 church bells in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, revealing a treasured collection unequalled in Australia. For each bell, Hervey listed the city where the bell was cast, the date of casting, the weight, the diameter, the age and the main frequency. The largest and heaviest of these bells were in St Petri Lutheran Church, Nuriootpa (1,098 centimetres and 532 kilograms), and Immanuel Lutheran Church, Light Pass (1095 centiments and 515 kilograms). The oldest bell, cast in 1872, was at Strait Gate Lutheran Church, Light Pass
