Old church bells removed for £80,000 restoration

A CHURCH in Watlington has had its bells removed for restoration.

The tower at St Leonard’s in Pyrton Lane houses eight bells, dating from 1587 and 1905 when the last two were installed.

A 2022 report by Whites of Appleton, a specialist bellhanger, concluded that the bells were still safe to ring but recommended they be restored.

Peter Logan, 70, who runs the St Leonard’s bell ringing band, set about raising the £80,000 needed for the work.

The target was reached a few weeks ago, helped by funding from the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust, the Oxford Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers, Oxfordshire County Council and a number of trusts and individuals.

It took a team of people three days to remove the bells with each one having to be lowered through a small gap in the floor of the clock room below.

Mr Logan, who has been tower captain for eight years, said: “There were between nine and 12 people involved at various stages, three people from Whites and the rest all bell ringers.

“Each bell had to be lowered down the middle of the tower and some of them are quite big. The biggest bell is 2,400 weights, which I think is about 1,200kg. It’s about the size of a car.

“The experts did all the main work and organised the various elements involved. There’s a bit of welding needed to unbolt them and that sort of thing as well as returning and replacing the fixtures and fittings.”

The bells were taken to the Whites workshop, where they will be restored and retuned.

Mr Logan said: “Whites will do all fixtures and fittings, the headstocks and the wheels. There are quite a few variables involved and they’re not quite sure how long various elements are going to take but it will all take around four months.

“Then we will go through the process of rehanging the bells and I guess it’ll take the same sort of time. All the wheels and clappers are being replaced as well.

“The bells will sound marginally different, although not noticeably different to most people’s ears.

“But they will be a lot easier to ring. One of the challenges that we’ve had as bell ringers is that they are very heavy bells and gradually, over the years, things have started wearing and they have become more difficult to operate.

“Each bell felt different in the way that it operated so as you moved around the ring and started ringing a different bell, you found that it rang completely differently and that took a while to get used to.

“When they come back, they should all tend to ring in the same way and feel more uniform. This is a very special event and something that will not happen again in our lifetimes.

“The bells are part of our heritage and it would be such a shame if ringing them stopped, which potentially could happen if something major happened to them through overuse or an accident that meant they couldn’t be rung any more.

“It’s a bit like classic cars — we want to keep these old things going and you can maintain them to a certain level most of the time but at some point you do need to spend a bit of time and money doing the job properly.”

Mr Logan, who lives in Pyrton Lane, said the parochial church council was responsible for the project but the bell ringers took the initiative with the fundraising in
particular.

“We started at the beginning of last year and have been cracking on with it ever since,” he said. “We reached our £80,000 target in the last couple of weeks. Whites had pencilled in a date for us so it all dovetailed and they were able to come in pretty much as planned.”

He said the ringers also hoped to replace the bell ropes, adding: “Apparently it can take up to two years as it’s no ordinary rope and takes a bit of manufacturing.

“Once the job is done, it should not need doing again for a century or more.”

There will be a celebration event when the bells are reinstalled.

Mr Logan said: “We haven’t really got to that stage of planning but I’m sure there will be events.

“We ring before church on a Sunday, so people who miss them will be glad when they come back.”

The other bell ringers are David Broyd (steeple keeper), Liz Davies, Sarah Fleming, Shona Black, Steve Bolingbroke, Jessica Bines, Sacha Mogg and Chris Bailey.

For more information, visit https://tinyurl.com/Watlingtonbells