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A servant bell or service bell is a bell used to call the attention of an in-house servant.
Marilyn Palmer.
Did you ring, sir? Country house communication through the ages
(archived),
A servant bell or service bell is a bell used to call the attention of an in-house servant.
History
In the 18th century, British country houses grew in size and servants were moved to separate service wings. Servants were further moved out of sight with the use ofservice tunnel
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...
s, basement walkway
A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box ...
s and utility rooms. With this followed a need for new methods of communication.
Rooms were fitted with bell pulls or levers which a household member could pull. A system of wires connected the pull to a bell located in a service area; in stairwells, outside servants' quarters or inside servants' rooms.
The bells were fixed to a board and each bell was individually labelled so servants could see which room requested service.
Bells hung from coiled spring
A selection of conical coil springs
The most common type of spring is the coil spring, which is made out of a long piece of metal that is wound around itself.
Coil springs were in use in Roman times, evidence of this can be found in bronze Fib ...
s. A pendulum connected to the spring would continue so swing, giving servants time to see which bell had rung. Bells could be of different sizes and emit different sound, thus allowing servants to identify the bell by sound.
How quickly the bells were answered was often a matter of complaint.
Marilyn Palmer commented that "No object is more evocative of historic household communication than the sprung bell."
See also
* Call bellReferences
Did you ring, sir? Country house communication through the ages
(archived),
National Trust
The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...
.
Further reading
* ''Technology in the Country House'' by Marilyn Palmer and Ian West {{Bells Bells (percussion)