[Richard Burrow] (0:00 – 0:31)
It’s Friday the 22nd of March [2024]. I am in Old Schools in Hatherleigh. My name is Richard Burrow and I’m joined by Isabella Whitworth.
I’m planning to interview her on the history of the bells here at St John’s and the work that is currently underway to restore them and reframe them and the fundraising work that’s been associated with this piece of work. So Isabella, if you could tell me a little bit to start off with about the history of our bells here at St John’s.
[Isabella Whitworth] (0:33 – 1:53)
We know that there was a tower built here in the late 1400s so the 15th century and I’ve always assumed as most people would that you don’t build a tower unless you’re going to put bells into it as you know that’s what towers were for. So there is a possibility that one bell went in but by 15, I think 1553, so that’s sort of 100 years or so later, there were three bells here. We know that because there was a church survey of goods and bells were added all the way through until 1883 when eight bells, there were eight bells here.
I was very fascinated because I’m a textile person and I discovered that in the researches I was doing for our fundraising leaflet that the money that was spent on the tower could well have come from the revenues of wool in the area. Maybe a benefactor gave the money or paid for the tower and that was a very common thing to do. This is pre-reformation and people were basically buying a kind of indulgence, you know, it’s a kind of easy way in through those gates.
And they may have paid for the tower and bells then, we don’t know. So that was the beginning of it and that’s how I started really studying the history of these bells.
[Richard Burrow] (1:54 – 2:01)
So we know from records that the bells were last recast in 1929, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
[Isabella Whitworth] (2:02 – 2:30)
Yes, in 1883 the two treble, the two top bells in the scale (as it were), as we have eight bells, were added in at that time and they’d been added to a cast of bells which had been done by a family of bell founders called ‘Bilby’ who came from Cullumpton who seemed to be quite an eccentric bunch and only, well this is hearsay, but cast bells by the light of the full moon.
[Richard Burrow] (2:30 – 2:31)
Oh how lovely.
[Isabella Whitworth] (2:34 – 3:31)
And they were known, this set of eight bells by the time the second, the last two were added, were thought to be pretty untuneful and not very nice to ring. I don’t know why they weren’t nice to ring but they were certainly pretty hard on the ear. As a ringer it’s not nice ringing untuned bells but as somebody in a town it’s even worse and we know that the 1929 recast was funded by two sisters who lived in a house just above the churchyard and who would have been well aware of the fact that the bells weren’t tuned properly every Sunday and every practice.
So when it came to a commemoration for their brother who was I think a doctor or a surgeon in the town they were very happy to recast the bells. They also funded the clock so that was done at the same time.
[Richard Burrow] (3:32 – 3:54)
So from your perspective as a bell ringer here can you tell us a little bit about you know towards the end of last year towards the end of 2023 where obviously things were winding down you were sort of getting prepared for the bells to be lowered. I believe you had an open tower?
[Isabella Whitworth] (3:54 – 5:00)
We had an open tower evening we wanted to involve the community because we were well we’ve had a lot of help from the community and we wanted to keep them involved because we want to keep bringing in new ringers. So you have an open tower anyone can come along if you ring or if you don’t and so we help the people. Very few turned up but the one person who turned up was rather important was Sir Michael Morpurgo and he came along we’d invited him we said would you like to come along because it’s your 80th birthday in the same week and we’ll ring you a happy birthday which wasn’t very successful but we did bring him a nice peel and he was very he’s very touched about that so that was lovely and then the next week we rang for the last time that was quite emotional for all of us we all hang up the bells and I took this photograph of the hands holding the the bells and we knew we weren’t going to be ringing in that position for for a long time because we’re changing ringing floors we’re going up sort of two levels really but we get we’re quite fond of our bells actually and it is an activity we all enjoy and we all get along together so it was kind of sad really.
[Richard Burrow] (5:00 – 5:08)
Well quite a thing really I suppose to think that you know those those bells have been in situ for nearly 100 years and to think of the ringers that have gone before you.
[Isabella Whitworth] (5:09 – 5:13)
Yes well I’m always aware of that actually yes yeah you know who’s rung this bell before me.
[Richard Burrow] (5:15 – 5:22)
So you touched there on the plans to alter how you know where the the bell ringers are going to be in the building.
[Isabella Whitworth] (5:24 – 5:31)
Yes we’re going to well one of the things that I think we should talk about is is what I can tell you about is this the the frame.
[Richard Burrow] (5:32 – 5:32)
Yes.
[Isabella Whitworth] (5:32 – 6:25)
Because the frame itself was installed originally in 1883 when the two trebles were added and ever since then it it doesn’t seem to have performed very well it was reinforced with steel sort of braces at various points we don’t quite know when but there are signs of huge reinforcements and also we are aware that when we’re ringing that well we have been aware that the the frame seems to flex and that means that your ringing is can be very unpredictable you know you have a kind of rhythm to the ringing and then suddenly the bell does something a little unexpected and the experienced ringers of the group said that’s probably because the frame is flexing again and we did find that um well they’ve tried to tighten bolts and we’ve really got to the point they can’t tighten them anymore.
[Richard Burrow] (6:26 – 6:32)
So yeah I guess that makes you know ringing quite unpredictable and would probably give you some safety concerns as well?
[Isabella Whitworth] (6:33 – 7:20)
Just a few yes! That much weight above your head with frames. There were safety concerns and quite well-founded ones because when we took the frame apart it’s now come apart we found that some of the frame the bits that were out at the edge had just turned to dust I mean they were rotten or there was deathwatch beetle in them there is you know big problem up there so that one of them actually fell apart as we took it down so there was that you know that structure may well have been not um not only that was it needed bracing but it was actually not holding its weight either and one of the steel joists on the corner had completely delaminated so there were big problems high time this this work was done yes.
[Richard Burrow] (7:20 – 7:31)
So they really come to the end of their service of the life yeah um you you found some research I know when you were looking into the history of the bells and touch on the Stokes notebook.
[Isabella Whitworth] (7:31 – 9:46)
Yes that was really interesting, one of these sort of great coincidences because we there is something there’s a book called I think the register of bells or something in Devon and it gives the name of the main maker of the frame and there were lots of different accounts some said mr stokes made it some say Mr Hooper made it and it’s confusing because stokes and hooper did work together over at Woodbury which is the other side of Exeter and then they they their ways parted we don’t know why but in about 1883 maybe they’d seen Hatherleigh’s bells and they thought no no anyway they um they were obviously well one of them was obviously asked to do the job because um mr stokes um had a notebook and he the notebook still exists and it’s in the possession of I think it’s his great grandson roger who is a historian and still lives in Woodbury so great coincidence I got in touch with him through the history society I thought can’t be the same stone but it was and he sent me a an image of the page in which stokes had clearly come to Hatherleigh made some measurements and um you know it was obviously to do with reframing but left the opposite page blank and roger said that that’s most unusual if a job had been done so the supposition is really that he came to do a quote but never got the job or decided he didn’t want the job so it might have been Hooper or it seems that most frame makers left their name because it’s you know it’s a kind of mark of pride and it’s there was no frame there was no name on this frame and we think that it’s actually a bit of a bodge job we don’t know who did it there’s lots of the joints don’t fit very well and there are lots of little wedges here and there um and there are concerns about the choice of wood um the quality of the wood at various points and some of the wood doesn’t match and you know there are lots of things that aren’t quite right somehow so we don’t know but that’s the story.
[Richard Burrow] (9:46 – 9:59)
So as I understand it you volunteered to be part of a team that was involved in obviously the the lowering of the bells and and recording that process can you talk a little bit about your your recollections of that.
[Isabella Whitworth] (9:59 – 12:23)
We well did a lot of preparatory work and then the bull hangers were booked to come and they arrived i think 23rd of October well at least they one of them arrived on the 23rd of October and the other one ran arrived on the 24th and you know he started number one Neil his name is Neil Thomas and he started to he brought in the hoists he started to clear the way for the tenor the heavier bell to come through the floor because there’s a hatch just underneath the tenor bell and that has to go through first nothing else can leave the tower before the tenor bell so that’s what he did first now on the first day there were no bells lowered and the only they started to come down on the second day when Julian Farrah his name was came along and assisted Neil I mean the work with the hoist is amazing to watch you know how they shift the bells from one side to the other on these these hoists so we watched them do that and we weren’t expected really to help the bell hangers but we did and they they worked all day and all the bells came down on the second day and those were then lined up in the chancel so that the public could come and see them over the next few days and then after that we had to set to work to clear the tower of all the other stuff which is the a lot of wheels the frame a lot of hammers for the clock various bits and pieces a very very cramped place.
[Richard Burrow]
Yes tell us a little bit about the conditions up in the tower
[Isabella Whitworth]
Well it was we started work in in late summer and we had some hot weather then and it’s full of flies and full of sticks that the Jackdaws poke through poke through the chicken wire and it’s you know if you’re an arachnophobic like I am full of creatures and little holes that you you don’t really like to think about too much it’s very dusty as well so if you have a you know lung problem it’s not a good place to be so it wasn’t actually that nice and it was hot well so yeah so it wasn’t always pleasant I mean I was there really I can’t do any heavy work or with anything I would pick up bolts from the floor but I was there really to photograph the process and very interesting.
[Richard Burrow] (12:23 – 12:29)
Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of cost of that work then, it’s quite a you know substantial undertaking isn’t it.
[Isabella Whitworth] (12:29 – 13:22)
We were given a quotation of £75,000 by our bellhanger Matthew Higby who’s from Somerset, it it is slightly flexible within that because some of the work we’re doing ourselves and some of the work is unpredictable in length because he didn’t know how long the bellhangers would need to be there he didn’t know how much work we’d be able to do ourselves so within that total bill there are some adjustments to be made but that’s it’s a lot of money to raise and we were very lucky because we had some very generous donations right at the beginning and we had grants from bell ringing charities and also lots of private donations which sort of gave us a lot of confidence to start off because it’s very hard scratching your way at the beginning you feel this is an awful lot of money
[Richard Burrow] (13:22 – 13:50)
Quite a big mountain to climb yes yeah okay um so moving on to the actual work itself then so um i understand it started on the 23rd of October that’s when the work started yes okay so um tell us a little bit about the firm that you ended up using and the people that came along and the work that they did.
[Isabella Whitworth] (13:50 – 15:27)
Well we there aren’t that many bellhangers in the country so we got um quotations from three of them um and Matthew Higby was the most not necessarily I can’t remember who was the cheapest but he’s he was he has the best reputation of the ones we’d asked we just felt he was the right one to ask but there isn’t a huge choice to be honest and they’re all they all have a very long lead time because everybody’s waiting for the bellhanger so yeah so we we went for that company and on the turn well Matthew Higby who’s the is you know the head of the company he would come down and he did measurements we were able to ask him a lot of questions and then on the 23rd a gentleman called Neil Thomas came who I think lives in Norfolk so you know he travels about I don’t know if he’s a freelancer whether he works for Matthew Higby he came a long way with a van full of things most of which came out actually you know there’s a bellhanger so much stuff yes lots of tools yeah and then the following day Julian Farrah turned up to help and so Neil kind of prepared the tower for the first bell to come down and then Julian came along and once they started to get once they got going they were so quick you’d think you know it was going to take forever to get these great heavy things out but they they moved so fast in the tower moving the bells around and I mean they were lucky that we were there to sort of accept the bells at the bottom because we were there with the trolleys and pallets and wheeling them up but you know even so a lot of work.
[Richard Burrow] (15:27 – 15:40)
So on the first day then it was the the large the largest of the bells the tenor bell that was removed first is that correct yes so tell us a little bit about that then …
[Isabella Whitworth] (15:40 – 17:44)
Well it sits above it’s well the tenor bell weighs 666 kilograms gosh which is quite heavy yes um when i’m talking to children I say that’s six baby elephants and they they get that um but then underneath there’s a hatchway which goes down into the clock chamber which by this time was empty and then it has to be moved across to the center of the tower where there’s another hatch and then it goes straight down to the bottom so I wasn’t up there no I was up there actually when he was beginning to lower it and there was another group down down at the bottom sort of helping it down onto the pallets and
[Richard Burrow]
So tell me a little bit about who was there then from from the Hatherleigh bell ringers.
[Isabella Whitworth]
There was our tower captain Mark Wannacott our ringing captain Richard Harrison, Gary Bater who’s a ringer and from time to time various people came in Ian Grantham came in Mark Reddaway came in and we also had support from Robin Wannacott and his son Joe I think came in from you know lots of people came in to help you have to be a bit careful on a job like this because you know you you can it isn’t it’s it isn’t that it’s dangerous if it’s done properly but you don’t want people getting in the way you don’t quite understand what’s going on.
[Richard Burrow]
So it sounds like you were well supported by volunteers then
[Isabella Whitworth]
I think so yes yes! It was great because they helped us move bells as they came down we put onto pallets and trolleys and then we protected the the carpeted floor with chipboard sheets and then the bells were wheeled up to the Chancel area and displayed up there. I got the hoover out because it was so dusty really really dusty and we we displayed them in a long row and we put a note into the into the local parish magazine The Pump to invite people to come and see them which they did in quite considerable numbers.
[Richard Burrow] (17:44 – 17:49)
Yes wonderful and they were on display for about a week is that right?
[Isabella Whitworth] (17:49 – 18:27)
Yes about a week, yeah so then they were again transported out of the church by the bell ringers and some volunteers and some we had some very um helpful loans of equipment which was great because we had to have a special loader with very what i would just call them bungee tires so they didn’t mess up the outside the church and they were able to then transport the bells down on a kind of forklift through the pallet and then put them on the back of the of the truck.
[Richard Burrow]
quite a logistical operation
[Isabella Whitworth]
yes it was actually i was really impressed it seemed to work very well
[Richard Burrow] (18:27 – 18:40)
So tell me a little bit then obviously we’ve touched on you know the not inconsiderable sum that you had to raise for for doing this work, so how long had the fundraising campaign been going on for when did it start?
[Isabella Whitworth] (18:40 – 19:45)
Well we we first realised that perhaps this job needed to be done before COVID and I mean it’s just one of those barriers isn’t it everybody talks about before COVID when they plan to do things and they didn’t happen so we couldn’t really get started because we needed proper bank accounts all those sorts of things so I think we decided to go ahead sometime in 2020 and at that point I talked about the leaflet I just felt that the best way to get the thing started was to produce I mean I was in sort of communication business myself and I felt that was a good way of starting it off yes and then it could have a gift aid form and all those things and that’s when I started researching and the [Hatherleigh] History Society was fantastic because they have such a great archive of photos and they were really helpful in in letting me use photos from the archive for the leaflet and being somebody who takes photographs I have thousands of pictures of bell ringing and bell hanging and all sorts of things so I had a good library to to draw on.
[Richard Burrow] (19:45 – 19:51)
So there is that famous 1929 photo
[Isabella Whitworth] (19:51 – 19:56)
Yeah I wasn’t around then no!
[Richard Burrow] (19:56 – 20:02)
I remember seeing that yes the last time it was rehung
[Isabella Whitworth]
Yes that’s right so there are lots of those pictures around and um they’re lovely to have
[Richard Burrow]
So do you want to just give me a little bit of a a breakdown or touch on the organisations and people who have donated towards the fundraising
[Isabella Whitworth] (20:02 – 21:54)
Yes when we when we produced the leaflet which went out with the parish magazine we also approached the bell ring the sort of main bell ringing funds that are available to us one of them is the Central Council of Bell Ringers and the others the other is the Devon Bell Restoration Fund and we also approached the Hatherleigh Moor Management Committee and it was their donation really really kicked us off you know it was really great to have a nice lump of money offered to us and in my kind of textile head I thought isn’t it nice that there’s some sort of wool related money going back into the bells at this stage and then we’ve applied to the Balsdon Trust the Sharp Trust those have both given us money and we also donated some of our own funds because bell ringers generally keep the money that they raise for weddings but we don’t we put them into a separate account which we’ve used for maintenance because our maintenance fund we’ve kept our own maintenance fund separate from the church for a while because to be honest it takes quite a long time for PCC to come up with an agreement if you need if you break a stay or something we want to mend it straight away if we’ve got the money we can make it we can we can do that straight away so we we was with completely with the PCC agreement we have our own account and we also are you know we have been fundraising separately from the church’s own fundraising for other projects within the church this has allowed us to approach people like the Central Council of Bell Ringers because it’s a specific trust for for the bells.
[Richard Burrow] (21:54 – 22:00)
Do you want to talk about some of the other fundraising activity that you’ve as a group organised in terms of raising funds then.
[Isabella Whitworth] (22:00 – 23:04)
Yes we’ve become experts at Bingo we have a really good caller and we do we have a reputation for doing a really mean Bingo evening, coffee mornings they don’t bring in a huge amount but if you do enough of them they’re quite they you know it all builds up we’ve had a bell ringing competition we’ve had events I mean I for one time I did I did a sponsored sleep out in the tower I’m I am arachnophobic and I thought well anyone can sleep out in the tower but not if they’re frightened of spiders and so I did I went and slept out it was almost middle of the summer and it was beautiful night actually but there was a great big thing in the corner that I had to keep an eye on but I was entertained by an Abba evening down in the community center I don’t know if they kept the spider at bay but it was quite it was it was it went very well and I raised i think something like £1,600 pounds fantastic it was good yeah wonderful i won’t do it again though!
[Richard Burrow] (23:04 – 23:11)
Am I right in thinking as well that the bellringers put on ‘Ding for the King’ as part of the coronation?
[Isabella Whitworth] (23:11 – 24:27)
Yes what we wanted to do I mean bell ringing but some bell towers can be a little bit you un-user friendly really and so we wanted people to come into our tower we wanted them to come in see what we do and sort of maybe get a get a feel for bell ringing and maybe they’d come and learn to ring but we wanted children to come in really because they’re the future and so we did a school assembly and then we invited the children to come in on coronation day in the afternoon and they were carefully supervised to just ding on the end of the bell that they weren’t ringing it with it in you know in the kind of bell ringing position and we thought we had a two o’clock we started and there was nobody there and we all thought nobody’s coming and then a small boy and his mother turned up after which we never stopped for two hours we had 200 people through and it wasn’t particularly a fundraising event but people left us money which was lovely so it did its job I mean it really worked we gave them badges and we gave them a certificate so they all went away with those some of the grown-ups too.
[Richard Burrow] (24:27 – 24:32)
Lovely so then of course there was the fundraising concert that the bell ringers have put on tell us a little bit about that one
[Isabella Whitworth] (24:32 – 26:01)
We were very lucky um that Sir Michael Morpurgo took an interest in what we were doing and he and his wife Claire and Carol Hughes who is the widow of Ted Hughes the poet and the Iddesleigh String Quartet who two of them live in Iddesleigh and they they have done a concert before last year at Iddesleigh but they offered to do one for us and they gave their services entirely for free which was amazing and that we they offered us two performances so our church can sit about 200 so we did have complete sellout so 400 tickets were sold and it was we’re still coming across people who come up to us and say that was the most amazing performance and somebody else said the other day it was a privilege to be there he said I would have paid £50 pounds a ticket and I said well if we’d offered tickets at £50 pounds each we wouldn’t have filled the church so we wanted everyone to be able to come in but it was an amazing event and we lit the church I mean Leigh was amazing our vicar was amazing he said we could do what we liked to make church look the way we wanted it so we lit it up we had a slideshow going of the work on the bells and then of course we had the music and poetry it was amazing I shall never forget that concert actually it was just amazing and particularly special because it was you know in aid of the the fundraising and the bells
[Richard Burrow] (26:03 – 26:06)
So tell us a little bit about the performances then…
[Isabella Whitworth] (26:07 – 27:56)
Well the the program lasted just over an hour and it was music interspersed with poetry and sometimes the poetry was read over the music which was particularly moving the first piece was called “Driftwood” and “My heart was a tree” is the title of a book by Michael Morpurgo which is poems mostly but the title comes from a poem by Ted Hughes called “My own true family” which is quite a sort of strange poem and it’s the last line of it but it’s really about the importance of trees the value of trees and the magic of trees too and so they weren’t all the pieces of music and poems weren’t about trees but they were quite closely created related to the countryside and they changed mood really so some of them were quite upbeat some of them were very very sort of thoughtful and rather sad or sort of pondered on just being alive really and some of them were about the joys of being alive so it was a it was a very mixed program and the Iddesleigh string quartet comprises Korenza Peacock first violin and she’s an extraordinarily talented musician full of energy and really, brings everything she’s kind of brought everything up to really to life as she was playing it was extraordinary to watch her and supported by Steve Doman, Josh Michaels and Joe Roberts on viola violin and cello all of them very very high class musicians and it was it was just a privilege to have them here actually we don’t often get concerts of that quality in Hatherleigh.
[Richard Burrow] (27:56 – 28:01)
No wonderful wasn’t it.. Talk a little bit about the performances then and it was predominantly classical music from different composers..
[Isabella Whitworth] (28:01 – 29:32)
Yes we had um well Korrenza’s speciality is Vivaldi she has an award-winning album of the so we got some four seasons which was lovely there was some Schubert from death and the death and the maiden I think it was. The Max Richter piece which Michael read over with his poem “You and me” had me reaching for the tissues actually it was really moving piece about life and the way life goes past and a tree stays and kind of watches it was a yew tree watching from a churchyard the cat’s churning was was a piece called “Moon feather magic” which is lovely it’s a really playful piece of music and it finished on quite a a contemplative piece by Korrenza herself who’d written I think this piece called the whispering tree. I think she read it I think I read that she wrote it for her mother her late mother so it was a little bit you know was it it was thoughtful and Michael told me afterwards that they felt that was the wrong note to end a concert so they wanted to do an encore and what they did if any of you anybody’s old enough to remember Steeleye Span they used to sing a song called “All around my hat” and it was quite sort of upbeat should we say and quite riotous and they had um straw hats which they played around with as well and they and it was it was played and sung and it was just great fun at the end and the audience sort of joined in and it was and then they left on a very upbeat note.
[Richard Burrow] (29:34 – 29:50)
Wonderful so Isabella I think it’s important that we mentioned for the record that this work on the the restoration and reframing of the bells is happening alongside other restoration work that’s happening here at St John’s do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
[Isabella Whitworth] (29:51 – 29:59)
Yes, it’s good that it is happening at the same time because in a way it’s to our advantage to move up a level with our ringing to a ringing floor higher up because that will shorten our bell ropes and make it easier for everyone to ring but particularly beginners and that coincided with the fact that the church wanted to improve the facilities in the church itself so that they can have a hospitality area and also have a disabled loo and access to the church and there are various restoration works going on particularly on the tower and stonemasons have been working on the outside and I think they’re going to be working on the inside as well to to repair it as well as that the clock has had to come out it’s had to come out because well basically for its own good but because it’s because of all the the dust that’s going to be over the few months of restoration but also because it needs restoration itself and the the clock face is being restored so our moving up a floor means that the church will be able to do some of the work it wants to as well so it’s it’s always it’s a good moment for all this to be happening and I think the I felt that the that the way we used the church during the concert was quite an interesting look at the way forward that building might might go because if you if you can do varieties of concerts but you know you can have a loo you can offer people coffee you can entertain them in another way then the building is useful and will be appreciated in the future for you know beyond just religious purpose well it has to doesn’t it because it’s you know buildings are expensive to maintain.