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The bell was reputedly found by gravediggers at Bangor Abbey around 1780, and it is speculated that it had been hidden at the time of the Viking attacks on Irish monasteries. It was in private hands for some 150 years, and then housed in the Ulster Museum before coming to Bangor Borough Council in the 1950s. It has been housed in North Down Museum , Bangor, since 1984. It shows the flowering of Irish Christian civilisation which was set back by the pagan Viking attacks. The bell would have been used to call the monks to prayer.

A supreme example of Early Christian Irish metalwork