Messines bell

  • Height  1092 mm
  • Width  1346 mm
  • Weight  1459 kg
  • Note  D#
Bell Inscription

Messines
To the Memory of the Members of the
Government Departments in Wellington, 
who lost their lives in the Great War, 1914-18.
‘We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields.’
 - MacRae.
Presented by Officers of the Government
Departments in Wellington.

More than 8000 public servants served during the First World War, and over 1000 lost their lives. Numerous rolls of honour to groups of public servants were published or erected. Although a proposed single national memorial to all public servants wasn’t progressed, three distinctive memorials were created – an Anzac flagpole in Petone, a memorial locomotive named Passchendaele, both to remember fallen railway workers, and the 'Messines' bell. 

Public Service Commissioner Paul Verschaffelt responded enthusiastically to a suggestion that public servants might ‘reserve’ a bell, immediately calling together representatives of his departments to discuss the proposal. The outcome was that a ‘government department’ bell, No. 10, was reserved to honour fallen public servants, and departments were advised of the amount they had been allocated. These sums were based on the number of employees, with staff asked to make a contribution linked to the size of their salaries. An advertisement in the New Zealand Railways Magazine suggested that those on salaries of less than £295 donate one shilling and those on more than £295 two shillings. The total subscriptions raised ranged from £1 or £2 for the smallest departments to £10 or £20 for larger ones. The Railways Department raised over £79 while the Post and Telegraph Department, which had initially sought its own bell, contributed £105. 

The bell was named after the Battle of Messines, fought in Belgium on 7–9 June 1917, in which the New Zealand Division suffered 3700 casualties, 700 of them fatal. Messines was the prelude to the much larger Third Battle of Ypres − better known as Passchendaele − which began on 31 July 1917.  In later years the bell was sounded at the end of carillon recitals held to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Messines on 7 June, just before the national anthem was played. 

The quotation reproduced on the bell is from the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Canadian doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae, who wrote it during the Second Battle of Ypres. His poem inspired the international use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

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