Each month we take a look at what’s been happening in St Mary’s through the eyes of one of the churchwardens. To end November, Roy Abel explores the part of the church that forms such a distinctive part of the Rye skyline – one seen for miles.
You find me in a new situation this evening, watching flames devour a log in a fireplace fit for a giant. My choice surely, no sign of a welcome overstayed elsewhere of course! I am here to celebrate a church benefactor, so let me take you outdoors through the cobbled streets – to the tower of St Mary’s.
Here we climb the oak staircase, then the brick treads hollowed by generations heading for where we are now: the bell-ringers’ chamber. The ropes leading upwards are tied back, passive and quiet but latent with the energy of so many celebrations, christenings and burials, worship and celebrations, coronations and alarms, as attested by the painted boards honouring ringers and wardens. But we’re not stopping here: we bypass the ancient turret clock, blackened like a cooking stove, (that might surprise us by wheezing into life as the ancient flywheel gathers momentum towards striking the hour) and climb a pair of ladder stairs to where the giant bells balance as if sleeping like bats.
To perform for the team of dedicated bell-ringers, exercising the arcane art of campanology, the bells must be serviced, groomed and tuned like thoroughbred horses. For weddings they will shout out, loud and joyful, but for the passing of a notable of the town, they are reverentially hushed. To achieve this takes no-one less than a former mayor to crawl below, looking up into the gaping metal mouths to wind fabric strips round the strikers to dull the eager bronze.
The bells are securely restrained within a housing of cast iron, and beneath them is a simple wooden floor -all that protects the bell-ringers beneath. Some decades ago, the epidemic of deafness that strangely appeared to afflict these musicians resulted in several layers of carpet and underlay being fitted within the chambers housing each bell, as you would a bedroom floor. This deadened the sound pounding the room beneath, and remained in place for many years.
Unfortunately, the tower is an attractive haunt for pigeons, and the warm, dry bell-chamber offered the prospect of an ideal roosting place. Pigeons are intelligent birds and came to understand that every occasion a verger or visitor opened a door or window, was an invitation to take up squatters’ rights. And squat they did! The result was that whenever the eminent councillor performed his business under the bells, he found that the pigeons had performed theirs before him. He would finish therefore adorned in feathers and poop, looking not so very different from when he dons the decrepit robes proudly worn by the Elect of this town.
However, the current ringing team includes someone with impeccable housekeeping
credentials. Judith ‘Belle’ Blincow of The Mermaid Inn swooped from the tower swearing to remedy the bell tuners’ plight. She sponsored cleaning of the chamber, the clearing of pigeon legacy, and the laying of a 4-inch mix of sisal and sheep wool in the bell housings to further insulate the floor (so it looks comfortable enough to start an Airbnb up there!). The tuners now walk the streets without having to ring a handbell to warn passers-by to avoid them.
Well, speaking of housekeeping, I must leave the hearthside to post notices of services at our beautiful church, namely Communion 10.30 on Sunday, or 10 on Thursday. Morning Prayer at 8.30.
God bless you ’til we meet again.
Image Credits: Roy Abel .
This imaginative article brings alive our bells and the tower that they live in. The bells have lived in their tower for hundreds of years observing all that goes on in Rye. If only they could speak.