If you are interested in attending the Genealogy workshop on 20th July or the Calligraphy workshop on 27th July please get in touch asap as places are filling up fast.
Please drop us an email : info@saxlinghambells.org.uk or call Lynn Roberts, Churchwarden on the number in “Contact” – leave a message on the machine if we are out.
Both workshops will be held in the Church Room starting at 10am and finishing around 12.30pm. Refreshments will be available.
Despite the odd drop of rain the fête was a wonderful afternoon out – thank you to all those who worked so hard to make it a success and to everyone who came out to support the fête.
The bell stall had examples of the items taken out of the tower – bell wheel, clapper and headstock – along with decorated items made from nuts and bolts taken from the tower.
There are still some items left – should you be interested in having any of them please email info@saxlinghambells.org.uk and we will do our best to help.
We still have a few places left on the first genealogy workshop – for details click here – to book a place please email info@saxlinghambells.org.uk ; we have 3 workshops planned at present, two genealogy and one calligraphy – in your email please note which workshop you would like to attend.
The Church Fête will be held on Saturday 22nd June, in the garden of the New Rectory. The Fête starts at 2pm.
Please come along and enjoy tea and cakes, various stalls including the tombola, bottle stall, plant and book stalls, games for all ages and live music…and a stall where you can buy the following:
All these items have been taken out of the bell tower – they are dirty, dusty, greasy, they may have splinters, rusty bolts etc – they are NOT TOYS – we hope that bell-ringers may like a memento, artists may find a base for a sculpture or other project, gardeners may like to use these items in a garden feature…we will bring one of each item to the fête so you can see what it is – the bulk of the items will be left in the bell tower and we will go to the church after the fête ends where those who have purchased an item can pick it up.
Also there are various nuts and bolts that have been cleaned up and painted available – we think these would make good paperweights.
As none of the items from the bell tower are toys and may be dirty, greasy or have sharp edges, splinters or rusty bolts etc, we will only be selling these items to adults.
The bells at the side of the car park waiting for the lorry.
On Thursday 23rd of May, early in the morning, six bells were taken from the church – five never to return, one to be re-furbished so it can be hung as the clock bell.
In the days preceding their departure the bells were, in all probability, seen by more people than in the previous 105 years combined.
On Saturday 18th May ringers from the village and surrounding area spent two hours ringing the bells for the village – 24 people came to the church to ring and watch the ringers – many more villagers heard the bells as they rang out across the village.
On Sunday 19th May the bells were rung for the last time before the 09.30 Service. Click here for details of the bell-ringing team on this day.
The Ringers on Sunday 19th May 2013 – the last time the bells were used before being taken down.
On Monday 20th May two gentlemen from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry arrived to begin the task of removing the bells from the tower. A system of chains and pulleys was put in place once the floor panels had been moved to create a space for the bells to descend. This system allowed just two men to safely remove bells weighing several tonnes.
Looking up from the clock chamber into the empty tower – note the rare X shaped bell-frame.
The bells were lowered to the floor of the ringing chamber, wheeled out of the external door to the ringing chamber and back into the church for storage. After the bells had last been hung, the Steward Memorial was fitted to the doorway linking the ringing chamber to the inside of the church. The addition of the Memorial means that it was not possible to bring the bells directly into the church from the ringing chamber. Of the six bells removed from the tower five made it through the outside door with ease, one, the tenor bell, was just a little bit too big. If you look closely about 6 inches from the bottom of the outside doorway you will notice a fresh gouge in the stonework – this was caused when the tenor bell, two inches, a mere 5cm too wide, was brought out of the ringing chamber. It is testament to the skills of the Whitechapel Foundry that one very small gouge is all the evidence that one bell was too large for the doorway.
The Bells in the church waiting to be taken to London.
On the 22nd of May we were delighted to welcome the children from the village school to the church. Peter and Neil from The Whitechapel Foundry kindly talked to the children about bells, how they are made and hung in the tower and also took questions including:
How do you get the bells down? Using a system of pulleys and chains – each bell takes about twenty minutes to bring down.
How did you get them into the church? Each bell in turn was put on a trolley and wheeled out of the ringing chamber’s outside door, around the side of the church and in through the front door using a ramp.
How old are the bells? The oldest is dated 1616 and the newest 1908.
Date on the bell to be used as the clock bell – 1616
How big is the largest bell? The tenor bell is the largest – it weighs 8 cwt and is 5cm wider than the outside door to the ringing chamber!
How do you get rid of the old bells? The bells are smashed with 28lb and 56lb hammers. The metal is then melted down in the furnace to make new bells.
How long does it take to smash a bell? This depends on the size of the bell and the metal composition. A small bell can be smashed in 20 minutes, a large one may take a whole day.
What percentage of tin is used? Between 18 and 24% of the metal is tin. 20 to 22% produces the best bells.
Have you ever hit yourself with a hammer? No, but the blacksmith has!
Taking the opportunity to examine the bells.
Later on in the afternoon and again in the evening volunteers opened the church for anyone to come and view the bells.
On Wednesday 22nd May 38 school children, 5 staff from the school and a total of 43 visitors from the village and surrounding area saw the bells – a great send off!
Bell being lifted onto the lorry
On Thursday 23rd May the bells were loaded onto a flatbed lorry (along with another Norfolk bell from the church at North Tuddenham) ready to be transported to the foundry in London. It was “Goodbye” to five of the bells – their inscriptions and details will be carefully recorded at the foundry – the sixth, originally cast in 1616, will be renovated and prepared for hanging as the clock bell later in the year.
The Saxlingham bells along with North Tuddenham’s loaded on the lorry
At 3pm a team of volunteers arrived to sweep up and tidy the old fittings and fixtures away. At the next meeting of the PCC it will be decided what will happen with the fixtures and fittings, current ideas include selling the fittings at the church fête (as memorabilia, for artists to use as a base for sculpture, to create a garden feature, any other creative use!) and using some of the wood to make souvenir pens. We will keep you informed as to the fate of the fittings and fixtures and give you plenty of notice so you may have the opportunity to obtain a piece of Saxlingham history!
The old fixtures and fittings.
Storing the fixtures and fittings safely
Next time you walk past the church you will notice that we have a smart Heritage Lottery Fund banner on the front railings. Thank you to everyone who volunteered to help!
HLF Banner
We are very grateful to The Heritage Lottery Fund for their support.
HLF Banner being taken to the church railings
We have finalised the dates for several events over the summer - please click here for full details.
The first date for your diary is 27th June at 19.30hrs when Mr. Simon Rudd, the Ringing Master at St. Peter Mancroft, will give a talk on bell-ringing in the church.
We also have genealogy and calligraphy workshops arranged and will be introducing a new church trail.
Arriving on the Whitechapel Road at the bell foundry it is easy to be transported back into history. The foundry has been active since at least 1570 and has been at its current location for several hundred years. The facade of the building has changed little in the last 200 years; police knocking on every door in Whitechapel during the hunt for Jack the Ripper in 1888 would have seen the same as those walking down Whitechapel Road in 2013. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is living, working history.
Going through the front door of the foundry you are greeted by the warmth and coziness associated with an old fashioned pub – unsurprising as, before the building became a foundry, it was a public house (The building was constructed around 1670 replacing a previous structure lost in The Great Fire of London). Displays show details of many of the famous bells cast at Whitechapel – The Liberty Bell, The Great Bell of Montreal, Bells for Westminster Abbey, the Bell sent to New York from London commemorating the 9/11 tragedy and, most famous of all, Big Ben. A cross section of Big Ben surounds the door to the foundry – a grown man can easily pass under the cross section and when you see the size of the doorway you get some sense of the size of the bell, Big Ben.
Before going to the foundry floor we were given a short talk explaining how a bell is made.
A strickle – which is half of the cross section of the bell – is made. This is essentially the pattern – it defines the shape of the bell and the thickness (which varies being thicker at the top and bottom of the bell than in the middle).
Then a mixture called loam is made. Loam consists of water, clay, sand, manure and goats’ hair. The loam is mixed up and some is baked into curved bricks. The curved bricks and loam are used to build the inner mould – also known as the core. The strickle is used to smooth the loam into the precise shape of the bell. The core is dried in an oven and then covered with graphite.
A bell shaped outer mould is lined with loam and the outer edge of the strickle is used to ensure the correct shape for the bell. The loam is dried and then the final layer is applied. This is quite a sloppy mixture – this layer needs to be slightly soft to enable any inscription to be made in it before it is left to air dry.
Bell mould
The inner and outer moulds are firmly clamped together to ensure a tight seal at the bottom and a special box is added to the top of the mould. This box has two holes – one into which the molten metal will be poured, the other to allow air and other gases to escape during casting.
Pouring molten metal from the furnace into the ladle
A mixture of copper and tin is heated to 1,150 Celcius in a gas powered furnace, any gases in the liquid metal are removed by de-gassing with nitrogen, any impurities that have risen to the surface (called “slag”) are cleaned off the surface and the metal is poured from the furnace into a large ladle lined with graphite. A manually operated crane moves the ladle to each of the bell moulds in turn. The moulds are filled and, after the metal has settled for a minute or two, topped up.
Pouring metal into the mould
Topping up the mould
The process of casting has changed little in the last 4-500 years – to witness the heat, smoke and smells of casting makes you realise how old the art of the founder is – the skills required to handle and shape molten metal into something useful to man have shaped mankind’s development for centuries. Casting bells is Whitechapel’s speciality but these same skills helped to mechanise farming and to drive the Industrial Revolution. The role of the Foundry changed during times of war. Canons are cast metal and many were probably made at Whitechapel (a fire in the middle of the nineteenth Century sadly destroyed most of the records), the foundry found itself in demand during World War Two and its aftermath (click here for more information from The Whitechapel Bell Foundry website.)
After being left to cool the moulds are removed and the bell is broken out of its loam case. The rough bottom edge of the bell will be smoothed off in a process known as skirting and the bell will be tuned.
7th bell awaiting tuning and finishing
There are hundreds of notes in a bell, a careful process involving shaving metal from the inside surface of the bell little by little, testing after each shaving brings the five main notes in the bell into tune. The bell is tuned whilst sitting upside down on a special turntable and the notes are checked with tuning forks and by computer.
Tenor bell being tuned on the turntable
Tuning a modern bell whose shape is uniform and whose properties are well understood takes between one and one and a half days – tuning an old bell which may have an irregular shape, impurities in the metal etc can be a mammoth task.
Inside of the tenor bell being tuned
Once tuned the bell has its inscription cleaned and made “sharp”, the outside of the bell is polished a deep black and the inscription is highlighted by being burnished. Then there is just the small matter of preparing the bell for hanging by adding an appropriate headstock (also purpose made at Whitechapel), transporting the bell to the church, getting it up to the top of the tower and hanging it.
Headstock for one of our bells
That however comes later in the story of Saxlingham’s bells – now they are in the care of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry being tuned and finished ready to be returned to the church tower once it has been renovated and strengthened.
Parts required to hold the bells in the tower
We would like to thank all at The Whitechapel Bell Foundry for their kind welcome and for sharing their great knowledge in a fascinating experience for us all.
For more information click here to visit The Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s website.
We are delighted that The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have awarded our project a grant of £100,000 .
The following press release was issued earlier today, 4th February, 2013:
“HLF East of England – MEDIA RELEASE
Village bells will sound once more thanks to Heritage Lottery grant
Church bells will once again ring over the Norfolk village of Saxlingham Nethergate, thanks to a £100,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
A new generation of ringers will also be created as the restoration work gives a fresh lease of life to a parish bell-ringing tradition that dates back more than 550 years.
The Church of St Mary the Virgin has a peal of eight bells – which is uncommon in the area – but centuries of wear and tear have rendered the existing bells virtually un-ringable. Now, however, the HLF grant, together with other funding raised by the church, means that five of the bells can be re-cast and the three oldest bells replaced with new ones. At the same time repairs will be carried out to strengthen the tower of the Grade II* listed church and to the unusual X-shaped frame that supports the bells.
The Parochial Church Council will also work with the village school and the local Scout and Guide groups to research information for a small exhibition and a new project website. The young people will learn about the history of the bells, the church and the village and will be encouraged to take up bell-ringing.
Villagers of all ages will also be able to get involved with, among other events, a visit to the Whitechapel Foundry in London where the new bells will be made and the others recast. As well as updating and expanding the heritage information available to local residents and school teachers a church trail worksheet will provide visitors with the chance to learn more about the building and its architecture, the bells, stained glass windows and the war memorial.
The restored bells will also enhance the village’s plans to commemorate the centenary of the First World War staring next year. The last restoration of the bells took place in 1908 and many of the ringers at that time went off to serve in the war. The story of the bell-ringers, one of whom was killed on active service, will become part of the commemoration.
Other results of the project include brochures, a video, and lectures on the history of the church. These will also be filmed and uploaded onto the internet.
Robyn Llewellyn, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, said: “This project embraces the entire community whose history has been bound up with their local church for centuries. We are delighted to think that young people will be at the heart of this work in taking up so joyful and melodious a pastime.”
For The Parochial Church Council of St. Mary the Virgin Geoff Blyth, Churchwarden and Fabric Officer said: “We are delighted with the generous support which HLF has given to our project. The bells were last renovated over 100 years ago and we look forward to sharing this rare experience with the whole community.”
-Ends-
For further information:
For further information please contact Vicky Wilford, HLF press office, on; 020 7591 6046 / 07973 401937, email vickyw@hlf.org.uk or Phil Cooper, HLF press office, on: 07889 949173. www.hlf.org.uk
Geoff Blyth, Churchwarden and Fabric Officer on: 01508 499369.
Notes to Editors:
Thank you to everyone who came to the Pudding Afternoon – snow was falling but that didn’t stop a good crowd descending on the Church Room to taste the delights cooked up by volunteers.
From trifle to apple and blackberry crumble, brandy chocolate mousse to Bakewell tart, burnt orange cake to lemon meringue tart and more – there was something for everyone! Thank you to all those who made a pudding.
For those brave enough to walk off their puddings, the church looked beautiful in the snow.
St Mary’s Church in the snow – 20th January 2013
On 20th January at 3pm in the Church Room we invite you to forget about any New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and join us for an afternoon of puddings!
There will be a wide selection of puddings available, something for everyone, so please come to the Church Room and enjoy. The Church will be open and members of the Bell Team will be available to discuss the bell project.
There is no charge for the puddings; any donations will be towards the Bell Fund.