Miles Graye

They were also journeymen craftsmen who travelled East Anglia making bells in the fields and churchyards, and who practised their craft from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to James II.

[2] Miles Graye I has been described as 'the prince of bell-founders', and began his career as an apprentice at a foundry in Colchester, which belonged to a Richard Bowler.

In 1598, Miles was examined by the bailiffs at the Colchester Quarter Sessions and made a voluntary confession accepting that "he is the father of the child with which Alice Mullynges is pregnant", he presumably having met the young woman at the house of Richard Bowler, and who may well have been a domestic servant there.

He died in 1649 and it is possible that he endured some financial difficulty in his last year arising from the Siege of Colchester of 1648 during the Civil War when his will of 1649 records that some of his property including his bell-foundry in Head Street[1] was destroyed by fire.

[2][4] It is recorded that Miles Graye II had a foundry in Saffron Walden[1] as there are records of bells being carried there by cart from St Katherine's church in Ickleford in Hertfordshire in 1637: First payd to Gray of Saffron Walden, bellfounder, for running and casting fower of the Bells belonging to the Church of Ickleford aforesayd, 13 li.

[2] Miles II and Jane also had a son Christopher Graye, born in 1626 and who also became a bell-founder, but he did not work in Colchester or cast any Essex bells.

[9] However a number of rings exist where Miles Graye cast the majority of the bells including Bramford,[10] Ipswich St Margaret,[11] Broxted,[12] Acton,[13] Bassingbourne,[14] Swaffham,[15] Little Horkesley,[16] and Gestingthorpe.

In John Speed 's map of Colchester from 1610 Head Gate is shown in the lower left corner, and Miles Graye's bell-foundry was in Head Street nearby
A late 16th-century bell by Miles Graye - formerly at St Mary's church in Stoughton in Sussex but now at the Weald and Downland Living Museum