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"Most chimes you buy in a shop don't sing — they jingle." Why a 67-year-old former marine conservation officer on the Yorkshire coast is selling her last hand-tuned bronze wind chimes at cost, before she closes her workshop.

Margaret "Nell" Pearce in the workshop at Filey where she has tuned bronze wind chimes for the last six years.

Two streets from the seafront in Filey, North Yorkshire, there is "a small workshop behind her cottage above the sea". Margaret "Nell" Pearce is 67. She was a Marine Conservation Officer with the Marine Conservation Society from 1987 to 2021 — loggerhead and leatherback turtle sightings logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast, nesting data filed, every recorded UK sighting cross-referenced before sunrise. For the last six years, only bronze wind chimes.

 

She does not play them. She tunes them, hangs them from the garden beam, and waits for the wind to come off the sea.

 

There is a final batch left in the workshop. After that, she stops.

the sound she couldn’t find in a shop

In June 2021, four weeks after she retired, Nell bought three wind chimes at a gift shop on the Scarborough seafront. Different sizes, different brands, all of them advertised as "coastal." She hung them from the garden beam and sat in her chair after dinner for two weeks. None of them sounded like the coast. They sounded like keys on a kitchen counter.

 

At the end of the second week, she took all three down. On the wall beside the back door, there was a small bronze ship's bell a previous tenant of the cottage had left behind in 1994. Nell tapped it with her fingernail. The bell rang for almost a full minute. The sound moved down the garden and out towards the sea.

The bronze ship's bell on the garden beam at Nell's cottage — the sound she couldn't find in a shop.

"If a bronze bell from the nineteen-nineties sounded more like the North Sea than three new chimes from a seafront gift shop, somebody was getting bronze wrong."

She drove to the builders' merchant in Scarborough the next morning and bought a blowtorch and a length of bronze stock. "I burned through forty pounds of bronze before the first tube held a note," she says. "And another forty before I learned to stop holding the torch like a flashlight." By the end of 2021 the garage had a workbench, a vise, and a wire rack of bronze tubes.

 

The first finished chime came out in March 2022. Four hand-cut tubes. One mother turtle on top — the animal she'd spent thirty-four years tracking through Marine Conservation Society records, following every loggerhead and leatherback sighting off the Yorkshire coast. Five hatchlings below. "I hung it next to the ship's bell on the garden beam," she says. "The bell was still louder. But the chime had something the bell didn't — five tubes talking to each other." By 2023, the workshop made nothing else.

what it sounds like when the wind comes off the sea

On the garden beam at Filey at dawn — tap to hear the wind play it.

A bronze chime sounds nothing like the painted-aluminium tube chimes most gardens end up with. Bronze sustains. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for close to a full minute. The four tubes overlap and bleed into one another. The chicks rattle softly underneath. The dome above the tubes catches the sound and pushes it down into the garden instead of letting it scatter.

 

In a light afternoon breeze, three or four overlapping notes a minute, with the sustain holding on between strikes. In a steady evening wind off the sea, the tubes start trading the lead and the smaller chimes come in underneath like a slow rattle. In a coastal gale, the chime moves into full chord and stays there until the wind drops.

"I spent thirty-four summers listening to the North Sea teach me what a coast sounds like. The chime is what I learned, set in bronze."

Nell's own chime has hung on the same garden beam for four years. It has not come inside once. When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of tea and listens.

"When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of 

tea and listens."

the drawer of cards in the workbench

Nell keeps the cards in the top drawer of the workbench, directly above the bench vise. Postcards, folded notes, the occasional photograph. She pulled the drawer open when I asked to see them.

 

"I don't open the drawer often," she said. "Every now and then, when a tube isn't coming to gauge, I do."

 

She set three on the workbench.

The top drawer of the workbench above the vise.

The first was from a woman named Anne in Whitby, who had hung her chime from the beam of her holiday cottage in late September. The first proper North Sea storm came through in October, late at night. She had opened the back door and stood barefoot in the doorway for the full twenty minutes the chime was in chord, and then posted Nell a folded card the following week. The card said: "I have lived on this coast for forty-one years and I have never been still for twenty minutes in the rain."

 

"That one I keep on top of the stack," Nell said.

 

The second was from a man named Daniel in Sheffield. No coast, no dune line, no North Sea. He had hung his chime on a hook on the back-garden trellis. The first warm April breeze caught it on a Saturday morning while he was making coffee in the kitchen with the back door open. He wrote that he had stopped what he was doing and stood at the back door for the rest of the morning.

"He wrote me that the chime gave a Saturday morning in his back garden a sound he hadn't known he was missing. I had never been to Sheffield. I picture his back garden every time the wind comes up here."

The third was a folded card from a woman named Patricia in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Patricia had hung her chime above her front-garden bench and had never moved it. The card had one sentence on it, in blue ballpoint pen:

"I sit in the garden every evening now. I never used to."

Nell slid the three cards back into the drawer and pushed it closed.

 

"That last one I think about when I'm filing a tube," she said. "You spend thirty-four years walking the shoreline before dawn, and somebody in a garden in Aldeburgh reminds you why."

what's inside each one

Four hand-cut bronze tubes. One mother turtle on top. Five hatchlings below.

Five details set Nell's chimes apart from the painted-aluminium tube chimes most garden centres sell.

1. The Bronze Sustain

 

Four hand-cut bronze tubes with the long, warm sustain Nell spent six years getting right. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for almost a full minute. Aluminium jingles and dies. Bronze carries the coast.

2. The Resonance Dome

 

The ornamental bronze cap at the top isn't decoration — it's an acoustic reflector. It funnels the sound from the four tubes downward and outward instead of letting it scatter into the air. Without the dome, a chime drifts. With this one, it projects.

3. The Salt-Weathered Bronze

 

Bronze with an antique patina is naturally salt-air resistant. Six years on the Yorkshire coast have proven it. No rust, no corrosion. Built for gardens that see weather, not sideboards that see dust.

4. The Bempton Tuning

 

Every chime gets a final tuning check against a single fragment of bronze Nell keeps in the front pocket of her work apron. She picked it up off the workbench one August morning in 2019. It rings between E and F — the frequency she associates with the wind across the water at dawn, the sound she heard every morning of thirty-four years on the Yorkshire coast.

5. The Loggerhead Constellation

 

One mother turtle on top, five hatchlings below: the configuration Nell spent thirty-four years mapping in Marine Conservation Society records — every loggerhead and leatherback sighting logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast. The form is the tribute. The sound is the chime.

why this is the last batch

By spring 2025, Nell's hands had started to tell her things she had been ignoring. Arthritis in both, worse on the right — the side that holds the tuning hammer. By February she could file a tube to gauge in the morning. By April she couldn't file a tube to gauge after lunch. By May the right thumb wouldn't grip the hammer for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.

"You can teach a hand to walk a shoreline for thirty-four years. You can't teach a hand to tune bronze when it stops working. Mine has stopped."

The last touch before the chime leaves the workshop.

She has hand-tuned this last batch herself — every chime in the final run, by her own hand. After these, she puts the tuning hammer down.

 

A hand-tuned bronze chime from a craft-gallery maker runs eighty to a hundred pounds. Nell is selling the last batch at cost. She has declined two consignment offers from coastal galleries and a York wholesaler who wanted to put them into gift shops up and down the Yorkshire coast.

 

"I don't need the money. I need them to sing. A chime that sits on a collector's shelf is just bronze."

get your wind chimes — current spring batch

The last hand-tuned bronze chimes from Nell's workshop — while they remain

what they wrote nell after the first wind

4.8

Over 7,000 sold — rated exclusively by verified buyers

Janet O.

✓ Verified

3 days ago

"I hung it from the beam of our covered terrace the afternoon it arrived. A storm front came through two days later. My husband and I sat outside and didn't say a word for the whole forty minutes the chime was in chord. I have never owned a thing that made us stop talking before."

Karen L.

✓ Verified

1 week ago

"I have lived in Cornwall for thirty years and never owned a chime I didn't take down within a year. The cheap ones get loud, the expensive ones get loud the same way. This one stays. The sound is steady and slow."

Thomas C.

✓ Verified

2 weeks ago

"Bought it for my wife as a fortieth-anniversary gift. It hangs from the trellis hook at the corner of the back garden. We get Pennine wind here, not coastal wind, but the chime takes it just the same. It is the first thing she comments on when she comes home from work."

Three Honest Questions Before You Order

Where am I supposed to hang it - and won't the bronze rust in a coastal garden?

Outside, anywhere the wind can reach — garden beam, deck railing, pergola hook, fence post, balcony. The bronze carries an antique patina that is naturally salt-air resistant. Nell's own has hung on the same garden beam in Filey for four years through North Sea gales. Most customers never bring it inside.

What if I live somewhere with very little wind?

A garden breeze is enough — the bronze tubes have a long sustain, so even one or two soft strikes carry for almost a minute. If the air is still, one light push of the dome sets the whole chime in motion. The tubes do the rest.

What if I don't love it when it arrives?

30 days to return for a full refund, no questions asked. A quick email to the support team gets it sorted.

see remaining stock here

Hand-tuned by Nell in Filey — sealed with her handwritten note

"Most chimes you buy in a shop don't sing — they jingle." Why a 67-year-old former marine conservation officer on the Yorkshire coast is selling her last hand-tuned bronze wind chimes at cost, before she closes her workshop.

Margaret "Nell" Pearce in the workshop at Filey where she has tuned bronze wind chimes for the last six years.

Two streets from the seafront in Filey, North Yorkshire, there is "a small workshop behind her cottage above the sea". Margaret "Nell" Pearce is 67. She was a Marine Conservation Officer with the Marine Conservation Society from 1987 to 2021 — loggerhead and leatherback turtle sightings logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast, nesting data filed, every recorded UK sighting cross-referenced before sunrise. For the last six years, only bronze wind chimes.

 

She does not play them. She tunes them, hangs them from the garden beam, and waits for the wind to come off the sea.

 

There is a final batch left in the workshop. After that, she stops.

the sound she couldn’t find in a shop

In June 2021, four weeks after she retired, Nell bought three wind chimes at a gift shop on the Scarborough seafront. Different sizes, different brands, all of them advertised as "coastal." She hung them from the garden beam and sat in her chair after dinner for two weeks. None of them sounded like the coast. They sounded like keys on a kitchen counter.

 

At the end of the second week, she took all three down. On the wall beside the back door, there was a small bronze ship's bell a previous tenant of the cottage had left behind in 1994. Nell tapped it with her fingernail. The bell rang for almost a full minute. The sound moved down the garden and out towards the sea.

The bronze ship's bell on the garden beam at Nell's cottage — the sound she couldn't find in a shop.

"If a bronze bell from the nineteen-nineties sounded more like the North Sea than three new chimes from a seafront gift shop, somebody was getting bronze wrong."

She drove to the builders' merchant in Scarborough the next morning and bought a blowtorch and a length of bronze stock. "I burned through forty pounds of bronze before the first tube held a note," she says. "And another forty before I learned to stop holding the torch like a flashlight." By the end of 2021 the garage had a workbench, a vise, and a wire rack of bronze tubes.

 

The first finished chime came out in March 2022. Four hand-cut tubes. One mother turtle on top — the animal she'd spent thirty-four years tracking through Marine Conservation Society records, following every loggerhead and leatherback sighting off the Yorkshire coast. Five hatchlings below. "I hung it next to the ship's bell on the garden beam," she says. "The bell was still louder. But the chime had something the bell didn't — five tubes talking to each other." By 2023, the workshop made nothing else.

what it sounds like when the wind comes off the sea

On the garden beam at Filey at dawn — tap to hear the wind play it.

A bronze chime sounds nothing like the painted-aluminium tube chimes most gardens end up with. Bronze sustains. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for close to a full minute. The four tubes overlap and bleed into one another. The chicks rattle softly underneath. The dome above the tubes catches the sound and pushes it down into the garden instead of letting it scatter.

 

In a light afternoon breeze, three or four overlapping notes a minute, with the sustain holding on between strikes. In a steady evening wind off the sea, the tubes start trading the lead and the smaller chimes come in underneath like a slow rattle. In a coastal gale, the chime moves into full chord and stays there until the wind drops.

"I spent thirty-four summers listening to the North Sea teach me what a coast sounds like. The chime is what I learned, set in bronze."

Nell's own chime has hung on the same garden beam for four years. It has not come inside once. When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of tea and listens.

"When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of 

tea and listens."

the drawer of cards in the workbench

Nell keeps the cards in the top drawer of the workbench, directly above the bench vise. Postcards, folded notes, the occasional photograph. She pulled the drawer open when I asked to see them.

 

"I don't open the drawer often," she said. "Every now and then, when a tube isn't coming to gauge, I do."

 

She set three on the workbench.

The top drawer of the workbench above the vise.

The first was from a woman named Anne in Whitby, who had hung her chime from the beam of her holiday cottage in late September. The first proper North Sea storm came through in October, late at night. She had opened the back door and stood barefoot in the doorway for the full twenty minutes the chime was in chord, and then posted Nell a folded card the following week. The card said: "I have lived on this coast for forty-one years and I have never been still for twenty minutes in the rain."

 

"That one I keep on top of the stack," Nell said.

 

The second was from a man named Daniel in Sheffield. No coast, no dune line, no North Sea. He had hung his chime on a hook on the back-garden trellis. The first warm April breeze caught it on a Saturday morning while he was making coffee in the kitchen with the back door open. He wrote that he had stopped what he was doing and stood at the back door for the rest of the morning.

"He wrote me that the chime gave a Saturday morning in his back garden a sound he hadn't known he was missing. I had never been to Sheffield. I picture his back garden every time the wind comes up here."

The third was a folded card from a woman named Patricia in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Patricia had hung her chime above her front-garden bench and had never moved it. The card had one sentence on it, in blue ballpoint pen:

"I sit in the garden every evening now. I never used to."

Nell slid the three cards back into the drawer and pushed it closed.

 

"That last one I think about when I'm filing a tube," she said. "You spend thirty-four years walking the shoreline before dawn, and somebody in a garden in Aldeburgh reminds you why."

what's inside each one

Four hand-cut bronze tubes. One mother turtle on top. Five hatchlings below.

Five details set Nell's chimes apart from the painted-aluminium tube chimes most garden centres sell.

1. The Bronze Sustain

 

Four hand-cut bronze tubes with the long, warm sustain Nell spent six years getting right. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for almost a full minute. Aluminium jingles and dies. Bronze carries the coast.

2. The Resonance Dome

 

The ornamental bronze cap at the top isn't decoration — it's an acoustic reflector. It funnels the sound from the four tubes downward and outward instead of letting it scatter into the air. Without the dome, a chime drifts. With this one, it projects.

3. The Salt-Weathered Bronze

 

Bronze with an antique patina is naturally salt-air resistant. Six years on the Yorkshire coast have proven it. No rust, no corrosion. Built for gardens that see weather, not sideboards that see dust.

4. The Bempton Tuning

 

Every chime gets a final tuning check against a single fragment of bronze Nell keeps in the front pocket of her work apron. She picked it up off the workbench one August morning in 2019. It rings between E and F — the frequency she associates with the wind across the water at dawn, the sound she heard every morning of thirty-four years on the Yorkshire coast.

5. The Loggerhead Constellation

 

One mother turtle on top, five hatchlings below: the configuration Nell spent thirty-four years mapping in Marine Conservation Society records — every loggerhead and leatherback sighting logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast. The form is the tribute. The sound is the chime.

why this is the last batch

By spring 2025, Nell's hands had started to tell her things she had been ignoring. Arthritis in both, worse on the right — the side that holds the tuning hammer. By February she could file a tube to gauge in the morning. By April she couldn't file a tube to gauge after lunch. By May the right thumb wouldn't grip the hammer for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.

"You can teach a hand to walk a shoreline for thirty-four years. You can't teach a hand to tune bronze when it stops working. Mine has stopped."

The last touch before the chime leaves the workshop.

She has hand-tuned this last batch herself — every chime in the final run, by her own hand. After these, she puts the tuning hammer down.

 

A hand-tuned bronze chime from a craft-gallery maker runs eighty to a hundred pounds. Nell is selling the last batch at cost. She has declined two consignment offers from coastal galleries and a York wholesaler who wanted to put them into gift shops up and down the Yorkshire coast.

 

"I don't need the money. I need them to sing. A chime that sits on a collector's shelf is just bronze."

get your wind chimes 
- current spring batch

The last hand-tuned bronze chimes from Nell's workshop — while they remain

what they wrote nell after the first wind

4.8

Over 7,000 sold — rated exclusively by verified buyers

Janet O.

3 days ago

"I hung it from the beam of our covered terrace the afternoon it arrived. A storm front came through two days later. My husband and I sat outside and didn't say a word for the whole forty minutes the chime was in chord. I have never owned a thing that made us stop talking before."

Karen L.

1 week ago

"I have lived in Cornwall for thirty years and never owned a chime I didn't take down within a year. The cheap ones get loud, the expensive ones get loud the same way. This one stays. The sound is steady and slow."

Thomas C.

2 weeks ago

"Bought it for my wife as a fortieth-anniversary gift. It hangs from the trellis hook at the corner of the back garden. We get Pennine wind here, not coastal wind, but the chime takes it just the same. It is the first thing she comments on when she comes home from work."

Three Honest Questions Before You Order

Where am I supposed to hang it - and won't the bronze rust in a coastal garden?

Outside, anywhere the wind can reach — garden beam, deck railing, pergola hook, fence post, balcony. The bronze carries an antique patina that is naturally salt-air resistant. Nell's own has hung on the same garden beam in Filey for four years through North Sea gales. Most customers never bring it inside.

What if I live somewhere with very little wind?

A garden breeze is enough — the bronze tubes have a long sustain, so even one or two soft strikes carry for almost a minute. If the air is still, one light push of the dome sets the whole chime in motion. The tubes do the rest.

What if I don't love it when it arrives?

30 days to return for a full refund, no questions asked. A quick email to the support team gets it sorted.

see remaining stock here

Hand-tuned by Nell in Filey — sealed with 

her handwritten note

"Most chimes you buy in a shop don't sing — they jingle." Why a 67-year-old former marine conservation officer on the Yorkshire coast is selling her last hand-tuned bronze wind chimes at cost, before she closes her workshop.

Margaret "Nell" Pearce in the workshop at Filey where she has tuned bronze wind chimes for the last six years.

Two streets from the seafront in Filey, North Yorkshire, there is "a small workshop behind her cottage above the sea". Margaret "Nell" Pearce is 67. She was a Marine Conservation Officer with the Marine Conservation Society from 1987 to 2021 — loggerhead and leatherback turtle sightings logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast, nesting data filed, every recorded UK sighting cross-referenced before sunrise. For the last six years, only bronze wind chimes.

 

She does not play them. She tunes them, hangs them from the garden beam, and waits for the wind to come off the sea.

 

There is a final batch left in the workshop. After that, she stops.

the sound she couldn’t find in a shop

In June 2021, four weeks after she retired, Nell bought three wind chimes at a gift shop on the Scarborough seafront. Different sizes, different brands, all of them advertised as "coastal." She hung them from the garden beam and sat in her chair after dinner for two weeks. None of them sounded like the coast. They sounded like keys on a kitchen counter.

 

At the end of the second week, she took all three down. On the wall beside the back door, there was a small bronze ship's bell a previous tenant of the cottage had left behind in 1994. Nell tapped it with her fingernail. The bell rang for almost a full minute. The sound moved down the garden and out towards the sea.

The bronze ship's bell on the garden beam at Nell's cottage — the sound she couldn't find in a shop.

"If a bronze bell from the nineteen-nineties sounded more like the North Sea than three new chimes from a seafront gift shop, somebody was getting bronze wrong."

She drove to the builders' merchant in Scarborough the next morning and bought a blowtorch and a length of bronze stock. "I burned through forty pounds of bronze before the first tube held a note," she says. "And another forty before I learned to stop holding the torch like a flashlight." By the end of 2021 the garage had a workbench, a vise, and a wire rack of bronze tubes.

 

The first finished chime came out in March 2022. Four hand-cut tubes. One mother turtle on top — the animal she'd spent thirty-four years tracking through Marine Conservation Society records, following every loggerhead and leatherback sighting off the Yorkshire coast. Five hatchlings below. "I hung it next to the ship's bell on the garden beam," she says. "The bell was still louder. But the chime had something the bell didn't — five tubes talking to each other." By 2023, the workshop made nothing else.

what it sounds like when the wind comes off the sea

On the garden beam at Filey at dawn — tap to hear the wind play it.

A bronze chime sounds nothing like the painted-aluminium tube chimes most gardens end up with. Bronze sustains. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for close to a full minute. The four tubes overlap and bleed into one another. The chicks rattle softly underneath. The dome above the tubes catches the sound and pushes it down into the garden instead of letting it scatter.

 

In a light afternoon breeze, three or four overlapping notes a minute, with the sustain holding on between strikes. In a steady evening wind off the sea, the tubes start trading the lead and the smaller chimes come in underneath like a slow rattle. In a coastal gale, the chime moves into full chord and stays there until the wind drops.

"I spent thirty-four summers listening to the North Sea teach me what a coast sounds like. The chime is what I learned, set in bronze."

Nell's own chime has hung on the same garden beam for four years. It has not come inside once. When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of tea and listens.

"When the wind comes off the sea at dusk, she sits at the kitchen window with a cup of tea and listens."

the drawer of cards in the workbench

Nell keeps the cards in the top drawer of the workbench, directly above the bench vise. Postcards, folded notes, the occasional photograph. She pulled the drawer open when I asked to see them.

 

"I don't open the drawer often," she said. "Every now and then, when a tube isn't coming to gauge, I do."

 

She set three on the workbench.

The top drawer of the workbench above the vise.

The first was from a woman named Anne in Whitby, who had hung her chime from the beam of her holiday cottage in late September. The first proper North Sea storm came through in October, late at night. She had opened the back door and stood barefoot in the doorway for the full twenty minutes the chime was in chord, and then posted Nell a folded card the following week. The card said: "I have lived on this coast for forty-one years and I have never been still for twenty minutes in the rain."

 

"That one I keep on top of the stack," Nell said.

 

The second was from a man named Daniel in Sheffield. No coast, no dune line, no North Sea. He had hung his chime on a hook on the back-garden trellis. The first warm April breeze caught it on a Saturday morning while he was making coffee in the kitchen with the back door open. He wrote that he had stopped what he was doing and stood at the back door for the rest of the morning.

"He wrote me that the chime gave a Saturday morning in his back garden a sound he hadn't known he was missing. I had never been to Sheffield. I picture his back garden every time the wind comes up here."

The third was a folded card from a woman named Patricia in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Patricia had hung her chime above her front-garden bench and had never moved it. The card had one sentence on it, in blue ballpoint pen:

"I sit in the garden every evening now. I never used to."

Nell slid the three cards back into the drawer and pushed it closed.

 

"That last one I think about when I'm filing a tube," she said. "You spend thirty-four years walking the shoreline before dawn, and somebody in a garden in Aldeburgh reminds you why."

what's inside each one

Four hand-cut bronze tubes. One mother turtle on top. Five hatchlings below.

Five details set Nell's chimes apart from the painted-aluminium tube chimes most garden centres sell.

1. The Bronze Sustain

 

Four hand-cut bronze tubes with the long, warm sustain Nell spent six years getting right. Each strike rings — and keeps ringing — for almost a full minute. Aluminium jingles and dies. Bronze carries the coast.

2. The Resonance Dome

 

The ornamental bronze cap at the top isn't decoration — it's an acoustic reflector. It funnels the sound from the four tubes downward and outward instead of letting it scatter into the air. Without the dome, a chime drifts. With this one, it projects.

3. The Salt-Weathered Bronze

 

Bronze with an antique patina is naturally salt-air resistant. Six years on the Yorkshire coast have proven it. No rust, no corrosion. Built for gardens that see weather, not sideboards that see dust.

4. The Bempton Tuning

 

Every chime gets a final tuning check against a single fragment of bronze Nell keeps in the front pocket of her work apron. She picked it up off the workbench one August morning in 2019. It rings between E and F — the frequency she associates with the wind across the water at dawn, the sound she heard every morning of thirty-four years on the Yorkshire coast.

5. The Loggerhead Constellation

 

One mother turtle on top, five hatchlings below: the configuration Nell spent thirty-four years mapping in Marine Conservation Society records — every loggerhead and leatherback sighting logged off the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast. The form is the tribute. The sound is the chime.

why this is the last batch

By spring 2025, Nell's hands had started to tell her things she had been ignoring. Arthritis in both, worse on the right — the side that holds the tuning hammer. By February she could file a tube to gauge in the morning. By April she couldn't file a tube to gauge after lunch. By May the right thumb wouldn't grip the hammer for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.

"You can teach a hand to walk a shoreline for thirty-four years. You can't teach a hand to tune bronze when it stops working. Mine has stopped."

The last touch before the chime leaves the workshop.

She has hand-tuned this last batch herself — every chime in the final run, by her own hand. After these, she puts the tuning hammer down.

 

A hand-tuned bronze chime from a craft-gallery maker runs eighty to a hundred pounds. Nell is selling the last batch at cost. She has declined two consignment offers from coastal galleries and a York wholesaler who wanted to put them into gift shops up and down the Yorkshire coast.

 

"I don't need the money. I need them to sing. A chime that sits on a collector's shelf is just bronze."

get your wind chimes — current spring batch

The last hand-tuned bronze chimes from Nell's workshop — while they remain

what they wrote nell after the first wind

4.8

Over 7,000 sold — rated exclusively by verified buyers

Janet O.

✓ Verified

3 days ago

"I hung it from the beam of our covered terrace the afternoon it arrived. A storm front came through two days later. My husband and I sat outside and didn't say a word for the whole forty minutes the chime was in chord. I have never owned a thing that made us stop talking before."

Karen L.

✓ Verified

1 week ago

"I have lived in Cornwall for thirty years and never owned a chime I didn't take down within a year. The cheap ones get loud, the expensive ones get loud the same way. This one stays. The sound is steady and slow."

Thomas C.

✓ Verified

2 weeks ago

"Bought it for my wife as a fortieth-anniversary gift. It hangs from the trellis hook at the corner of the back garden. We get Pennine wind here, not coastal wind, but the chime takes it just the same. It is the first thing she comments on when she comes home from work."

Three Honest Questions Before You Order

Where am I supposed to hang it - and won't the bronze rust in a coastal garden?

Outside, anywhere the wind can reach — garden beam, deck railing, pergola hook, fence post, balcony. The bronze carries an antique patina that is naturally salt-air resistant. Nell's own has hung on the same garden beam in Filey for four years through North Sea gales. Most customers never bring it inside.

What if I live somewhere with very little wind?

A garden breeze is enough — the bronze tubes have a long sustain, so even one or two soft strikes carry for almost a minute. If the air is still, one light push of the dome sets the whole chime in motion. The tubes do the rest.

What if I don't love it when it arrives?

30 days to return for a full refund, no questions asked. A quick email to the support team gets it sorted.

see remaining stock here

Hand-tuned by Nell in Filey — sealed with her handwritten note
Title

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Advertising Disclosure / Advertorial

This article is a paid advertisement (advertorial). The author has a financial relationship with the brand featured in this content. The information presented is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. Individual results may vary. We are not responsible for the accuracy of any third-party content.

About

Privacy Policy

Refund Policy

Terms & Conditions
Title

Advertising Disclosure / Advertorial

This article is a paid advertisement (advertorial). The author has a financial relationship with the brand featured in this content. The information presented is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. Individual results may vary. We are not responsible for the accuracy of any third-party content.

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