If you’re fit, healthy and don’t mind climbing up into the belfry, the chances are you will quickly achieve rapid promotion to Steeple Keeper – the person designated to look after the bells. Some ringers really enjoy this aspect of ringing as it helps to maintain and preserve our historic bells, keeping them ringing for future generations.

Flat shoes with steel toecaps, a hard hat and old clothes are fashion essentials when selecting the ideal outfit for maintenance work. If you’re undertaking the project during the winter months, accessorise with a thermos of hot tea and a couple of thick jumpers.

If your bells are basically ok, you may just be involved in the basics – changing stays, ropes, checking the belfry, cleaning up and devising increasingly cunning pigeon defences, or you might find yourself assisting as ‘local labour’ when a professional bell hanger is employed to re-hang or restore a set of bells. In this case, you’ll need insurance (easily arranged through your church) for taking part in something other than routine maintenance. If your bells are going to be taken out of the tower, you may be asked to operate a chain hoist, unscrew bolts, take wheels off or go downstairs repeatedly to ring up and down whilst the bell hanger watches the action of a bell. Most importantly of course, you will make many cups of tea. Climbing up and down the stairs or ladder hundreds of times a day will save you a fortune in gym membership fees.

By assisting a visiting bell hanger with restoration work, you will be saving your church a considerable amount of money and have the satisfaction that you played a part in the ongoing life of the bells. Maybe your bells need to be ‘quarter turned’, or perhaps need new clappers, but as this only needs doing every couple of hundred years, you can tick that chore off the list and let someone else worry about it next time.

If you do a really good job as ‘local labour’, word can quickly spread and … just as the project is finished … you might receive a phone call from another nearby tower who are having their bells restored, but the local team don’t have a suitably fit volunteer to help. Keep hold of that hard hat, you’ll probably need it!

 

NEVER work alone in a belfry or when bells are up. Take particular care when working above someone else particularly if you are using sharp or heavy tools.

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