Bell Ringing

It has taken us nearly a hundred years to fill the bell frame in our church tower. A four bell frame was installed in 1927 and the three old bells were placed into it. The treble bell, cast in 1595, the second, cast in 1775 and the number four bell, cast in 1634. The space for the number three bell remaining empty ever since. Then one day last year Mike King appeared at the church gate whilst several members of the congregation were working in the churchyard, “do you need any help with your bells?”……..

 

This conversation led to Mike volunteering to get to work organising the cleaning out of the bell chamber, undertaking a full maintenance programme on the three bells, painting the metal bell frame and teaching some new recruits how to ring. It also resulted in an application to the Keltek Trust to find us a fourth bell.

 

The Keltek Trust is an organisation that helps rehouse bells from redundant churches, and they found us a bell with the right note, A, from St Matthew on the Hill, a church in Bestwood Nottinghamshire. The church wardens appointed Tom Blyth from Collingham, Newark to install the bell, obtained a faculty from the diocese to allow us to proceed and so finally the big day arrived!