Problems
The bells and ringers are housed in the top two floors of the church tower. The ringers stand in the Ringing Chamber to ring the bells, the bells hang in the frame in the chamber above. Both rooms need a certain amount of work. Not all of it is urgent but the work will be much cheaper and easier if we can do it all at once.
The work would be simple if the bells were at ground level with plenty of space around them. Unfortunately the bells are in the tower 50 feet above ground level inside a small stone chamber with access via a spiral staircase to the Ringing Chamber and then a ladder to the frame. The difficult part of the work is going to be getting the bells down from the tower, out of the Church and onto a lorry.
There are two floors between the bells and the ground. Each floor has a removable centre section so that we can shift the bells to the middle of the tower and lower each in turn. The problem is the bells have been in place for 300 years and a lot of fittings have been added since they were originally lifted into place. All these will have to be removed, stored safely for three months and then reinstated. The biggest problem is the mechanism for the tower clock - also an old and protected mechanism - but we also have to deal with simple things like the wiring and plumbing.
The bells
The sound of the bells is made by the clapper striking the sound bow. Every hundred years or so each bell should be dropped from its headstock and twisted into a new position so that the clapper stikes a fresh area of the sound bow. Our bells have never been turned so the clappers have been striking the same area of each bell for nearly three hundred years. The bells are badly worn and must be removed to be machined and retuned.
Another problem is that the bearings which support the clappers themselves are wearing out. The wear allows the clappers to twist so that they do not swing true. Our tenor (the heaviest bell) is particularly badly worn and the clapper tends to roll and bounce so that the bell sounds twice at one stroke. It rings "ding, dong, dunk" instead of "ding, dong". There's a photo in the gallery showing the wear to the clapper and soundbow.
Once the bells are out of the tower they will be taken across country to the bell founders leaving us with an empty ringing chamber. We plan to remove the bell frame, build the steel supports, and replace the roof but we don't know what we are going to find when we do have an empty ringing chamber.
When the bells come back they will be displayed in the Church for a blessing. All we have to do then is reverse the process of removal; winch the bells back up, rebuild the frame, rehang the bells and replace everything else that we've had to clear out of the way.
The frame and floor
The bells are held in a wooden frame. It has to resist the load from two and a half tons of bells swinging to and fro. The joints of the frame have worked loose and the frame itself is rocking within the tower. The beams of the floor under the frame are decaying and must be replaced. We cannot replace the frame itself because it is as old as the bells. Instead we will have to remove the bells and frame, build a steel sub-frame, and reinstate the wooden frame on top of it.
The tower, louvres and roof
The tower has a plain flat roof but this roof leaks. The best time to repair the roof will be whilst the bells are out of the tower. Workmen will be able to gain full access to the roof without having to worry about damaging or being injured by the bells. We could replace the flat roof but a better solution would be to install a pitched roof.
This pitched roof would not affect the appearance of the tower because it would be behind the parapets of the tower and not visible from the ground. Although it would cost slightly more than a flat roof it would be longer lasting and would allow us to install louvres to improve the sound of the bells.