Launceston local and author Paul Richards has spent about a year redesigning a bell that was cast from iron ore in the West Tamar region during the 1800s. 

The first iron ore was found at Brandy Creek, now known as Beaconsfield, in 1805. 

“This discovery attracted great attention and Lieutenant-Colonel William Patterson, who died only a few years later, forwarded a quantity of hematite to Portsmouth in England, but what became of it is not known,” Richards said. 

“From early [newspaper] reports, I found that a bell was actually cast in Melbourne and sent to a Vienna exhibition.” 

From a sketch, Richards identified the bell was made by the Ilfracombe Iron company in Beaconsfield. 

“The only thing the we have left is a photograph of a Victorian Court. Every time we made a submission [to have an exhibit overseas], had to document what they were sending and they would get their own section called a court,” he said.  

“It was from this sketch that pattern makers were able to design and make the pattern,” he said.  

The bell’s height was reported as 18 inches with a 24-inch mouth. It was cast from a mix of Ilfracombe iron ore from the old blast furnace site and scrap iron.

The reproduced bell weighs 96 kilograms.  

Richards, with the help of Craig Sheehan – who now owns Ilfraca Farm – and Nigel Burch, applied for a West Tamar Council Community Grant for $5000 to remake the bell. 

“They granted us that and we spent the last six months developing the pattern and having it cast,” he said.

“We’re having a special tripod made the same as [the one in Vienna] and it’s going to be given to the centre to put on display in February next year.”

The trio have also penned a book about the history of hematite and the extraction of iron ore smelting in the West Tamar, which will be launched at a later date. 

“Although the discovery received great attention at the time, it took 67 years before the ore load was extracted and smelted in both Victoria and Tasmania,” Richards said. 

“The quality of the iron was of such a high standard that two bells were cast in Melbourne and were immediately displayed.”

The smaller bell was displayed at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1872. 

“The commissioners for the Vienna exhibition said they liked it so much they asked them to make another one, so they made a bigger one which weighed 80kg,” Richards said. 

The bigger bell went to Vienna. 

“The provenance of these bells and their fate over the next 150 years is the major focus of this book,” he said.

Richards said the reproduced bell was made by Castings Tasmania. 

“There is only two places in Tasmania today that you can get something very large cast. [Casting Tasmania] is really just getting going and we gave them one hell of a task because no pattern maker had made a bell pattern for years,” he said. “They have done a suburb job.”