Bishop blesses restored church bells

THE Bishop of Dorchester led a blessing of the bells at St Leonard’s Church in Watlington after they were restored.

Rt Rev Gavin Collins led the ceremony, which was attended by about 100 people, 60ft up in the bell tower, accompanied by Rev Daniel Thompson, vicar of the Pyrton Lane Church.

The eight bells, which date from 1587 and 1905, were returned in November after being restored and retuned by Whites of Appleton, a specialist bell hanger, at a cost of about £80,000.

Blessing the bells, Bishop Gavin said: “This is a wonderful set of eight really beautiful bells.

“They have brand new wheels and stays and rope that all looks immaculate and beautiful. The bells are here to sound that audible beauty as they ring out to invite people to worship and to declare significant events in the life of our nation.

“They’ve been rung for war, they’ve been rung for peace, they’ve been rung for celebrations, they’ve been rung in lament of funerals and, of course, at the local level, celebrations in weddings and celebrations on a Sunday.

“Thank you all who have contributed with hard work and finances to enable this restoration and retuning of this set of bells. Thank you to all of the campanologists who have rung so faithfully and continue to do so.

“As I pray God’s blessing on these bells, we pray that for many years to come they will declare the beauty of God and his creation through sound and through music across Watlington and the valley.”

Guests included the bell-ringers, people who helped fundraise, villagers and Brian White, 83, the retired director of Whites.

Bell-ringer Steve Bolingbroke, of Brook Street, said: “They are much easier to ring than they were.

“The bigger bells, the seven and eight, were really too heavy for us to ring and now we can ring all of them pretty confidently as a group. It’s lovely to see so many people here who donated to the restoration. This is a celebration of a piece of work that took almost two years to raise the money for.”

Shona Black, of The Groggs, Watlington, said: “The bells ring so much more easily and they sound so much better. Before they were quite difficult to ring.”

David Broyd, 74, of Brookside, Watlington, said: “We’re on a earning curve at the moment but we’re trying to get the best we possibly can out of them.

“The notes are much more accurate to what they should be because each bell has its own note.”

He said St Leonard’s was unusual in having eight bells. “A lot of towers only have six so it makes the possibilities greater,” said Mr Broyd. “These are ‘draught’ bells as well. We pull them from the ringing room on the ground floor. There aren’t many towers like that.”

The bells were restored after a recommendation in a 2022 report, although they were deemed to be safe still.

Peter Logan, who ran the St Leonard’s bell-ringing band, set about raising the funds needed.

The restoration included fixing cracked bell casings, which caused some of them to be out of tune and replacing the wooden bell headstocks, from which they were hung, with cast-iron ones.

The biggest bell weighs 1,200kg.