After at least 350 years, the ancient timbers of the bell frame have sadly gone the end of an era. But a new era awaits us – to welcome a full compliment of two new and four renovated bells, more pleasing to the ear, easier to ring and in a new steel frame that should easily last yet another 350 years.
Here I want to record the practical work in getting the 5 bells and over 45 pieces of ancient oak safely removed from the church tower. The work took three days at the end of January 2021 and was done by contractors Islwyn Pugh and bell hangers Whites of Appleton – with a bit of help from the village.
These two photos were taken from almost the same place – before and after, what a difference. The right hand photo shows the offset ledge where the upper tower wall becomes thinner. This ledge was used to support two massive 12 inch square beams carrying the old timber frame and it’s bells.
The first job for Jem and me was to remove bell wheels, stays and ropes. Ropes are simply tied to the wheel spokes and the stays are just bolted to the headstocks. The two halves of each wheel are bolted together along adjacent spokes and separate from the headstock into two semi circular halves. The right photo is after all ropes, stays and wheels have been removed – and shows the split wheels stored by the window openings.
Because the individual timber pieces had to be identified and inspected by the church archaeologist after the frame’s removal, every piece was labelled and numbered while the frame was still in place. – and the numbers recorded on detailed drawings of the frame. With wheels and stays removed, walking on top of the bell frame without any hand holds gets rather precarious – so it was a fun challenge for me to crawl all round the bottom of the frame and screw numbered sheep tags to some 45 pieces of well seasoned oak.
Before any bells could be removed, the trap door openings in all three tower floors had to be opened. As shown below, the treble bell (No.1) had to be removed from the centre of the frame and manually placed to one side to allow access to the opening in the middle of the belfry floor. This was done manually by two men from Whites – at over 250 kilos, quite a lift. I think they must have also used levers to help with the lift.
This photo shows the treble pit in the frame after the bell has been removed. The boards in the belfry floor are loose and can be easily lifted to allow items to be lowered through to the ground below. Note below the bottom halves of the well greased plain bearings on which the bell rotates during ringing.
So now the bells and frame had to be lowered to the ground through the openings – using electric hoists. The big tenor bell with it’s fittings weighs over 500 kilos, so care was needed to ensure all lowering equipment would be safe and secure. As shown in the left hand photo below, the old roof timbers still have staple shaped brackets used many years ago for work on the bells – but we were no longer confident that they and the roof above could still take weights of over 500 kilos. The answer was to fix new steel I beams to the tower walls to provide secure fixing points for the electric hoists.
To access the top of the tower to install these new steel beams on their wall brackets, we had a maze of scaffolding constructed around all five bells and the timber frame. The scaffolding boards are some way above the top of the frame and provide a rare opportunity to comfortably view the underside of the roof without having to balance on frame timbers.
Two of the three steel I beams were bolted to the walls, with a third “floating” beam free to move to where hoists are required. The beams are permanent and will not be removed from the tower so they are now available for any future work on the bells.
The bell hangers use two hoists to remove the bells, one fixed to the floating beam directly above the central floor opening, and the other over the bell itself. They attach chains to the bell from each of the two hoists, lifting first directly over the bell and then gradually transferring the weight to the hoist over the opening, letting the bell swing gradually across to the central position. The floating beam has to be clamped firmly to the outer beams while lifting and lowering the bell – to ensure there is no movement of this floating beam.
After the new steel beams were installed, all boards and scaffolding were then removed.
The stage had now been reached where Whites could start lowering bells and frame timbers to the ground a long way below.
The treble pit in the frame was the first to be dismantled and lowered, to provide full access to the floor opening and give space enough for the remaining four bells to pass through the hole. Due to Covid restrictions, we were unfortunately unable to take photos of this part of the work in the enclosed space of the belfry.
This photo looks vertically up from the ground floor of the tower, up through two trapdoor openings to the bottom of the underside of the belfry floor. The hoist chains and electric cable snake down from the belfry. Five holes can be seen in the wooden ceiling of the ringing room – through which the ringing ropes descended from the five bells. The positions of these holes will need changing – with an extra hole for when we get all six bells installed.
This photo shows the first bell lowered all the way down to ground level. A large cast iron clapper has to be removed from under each bell so that the bell can then rest flat on the wooden palette.
All five bells, numerous frame timbers, some up to 4 metres long, and finally the four massive beams which supported the bells and frame – came down safely through this opening. One moment of concern caused a sudden halt in proceedings – the large tenor bell had only 1 cm clearance to just squeeze through the last floor opening.
Here Whites staff move the bells out of the church and line them up ready for
transport to their works. We had planned to save over £2,000 by doing this
work with our own village labour, but Covid got in the way. At Whites’ works,
the four bells will be given totally new headstocks, stays, wheels, clappers
and even proper enclosed roller bearings – and each will be tuned to ensure a
pleasing ring in a peal of now six bells.
The old treble made in 1673 is beyond proper tuning, and the Diocese in
Oxford say it has to be retained and displayed in the church. We are planning
to place it on a special frame, in the door alcove just under the old wall
paintings.
To save some costs, villagers moved the bells to the old tennis court at the
rec and there Jem lifted them onto Hugh’s trailer for transport to Whites in
Appleton.
So now the bells are out, just the frame and support beams to follow.
This photo above shows the whole oak frame stored on palettes ready for the
Diocese archeologist to examine, looking for items of historic interest. He has
since been on site and we now await the report of his findings.
At the very start of this restoration project, there was a lot of debate as to whether the original timber frame could be retained – I would have loved to have kept it. But these two photos give some indication of the extent to which many timbers had dramatically suffered from rot over many years. The left photo shows ancient metal strapping because of problems from at least a hundred years earlier. The right photo shows this same bottom beam from the underside – severely rotten. The timbers could perhaps have been repaired, but at a massive cost almost certainly beyond our means.
This also shows the poor state of the timbers. This L shaped corner post originally had a tenon joint fitting into a mortice on the bottom sill of the frame but the tenon has totally disappeared because of rot.
Very little of the frame’s poor condition was visible before it was dismantled.
On the left are just the pulleys through which the ropes can freely move without any snagging. The old cast iron clappers are on the right, showing slight flattening where they have struck the inside of the bell, some for over 350 years. The bells also show corresponding dents where hit by these clappers. Over time, bells can be rotated to prevent these dents becoming too deep and which can eventually cause a bell to crack.
And finally, these massive oak support beams were removed, the top two probably having been in the church over 350 years. To have a cross section of 12 x 12 inches, the timber could be at least 500 years old.
The two lower beams were added early in the 20th century to provide necessary support to the two on top, installed at 90 degrees under the older beams. The ends of the top beams can be seen to show some rounding from wood rot. As only the end two inches rested on the tower offset, it was clear they needed this urgent support. Even the new beams were showing signs of rot at their ends and the timber pads they rested on were looking fragile – so yet another reason why this major repair project was necessary.
So this record covers just the first part of the repairs – the next report will cover the detailed work of installing the new steel frame and re-hanging the six renovated bells with all their new fittings.