LONDON’S FAMOUS PEAL

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 298, 25 July 1929, Page 5

LONDON’S FAMOUS PEAL

BOW BELLS NOW SILENT. No Money for Repairs. “ Bow Bells are not ringing. They ought to be, but they are out of order, and there is no money for their repair.” This statement was made by Mr T. H. Ellis in Common Council at its meeting in Guildhall, London, recently. He severely criticised the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for not voting large sums out of the City Parochial Foundation towards the upkeep of the city churches. “ The Bishop of London,” Mr Ellis said, “asks, ‘What does the city do for the church ? ’ The reply is here. The City Parochial Foundation derived an income last year of £62,648 from properties in the city. This sum was left to city churches in bygone times. Of its £62,648 it sets aside only £15,000 for the upkeep of 41 city churches. The result is that they are being positively starved. “ When the dome of Wren’s Church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, recently fell into disrepair iall that the Foundation would do for its preservation was to land £IOOO, ho be repaid with interest.”

London life would have been out of joint, indeed, centuries ago had Bow Bells been silenced (writes Mr Walter G. Bell). There is no peal in the city so famous as this one. It has woven itself into London’s story. To be born within sound Of Bow bells gives the birthright to a Londoner. Bow Bells, with those of other city qhurches, naiig the curfew to medieval London. When observances of the curfew bell fell into disuse still the peal played an important part. It gave the hour when work should cease. A vitally important matter this to city apprentices. All children, who know the vivacious story of Dick Whittington better than sour historians, will tell that it was the chimes of Bow Bells in Cheapside that Dick heard when, weary with his journey, he cast himself down by the stone at the foot of Highgate Hill. The bells at Bow Church originally were six in number. They perished in London’s Great Fire of 1636, and a new set was oast for the new church which by the year 1680 Sir Christopher Wren had built—the church that now stands. Another new set was supplied to the belfry in the middle of the eighteenth century, numbering ten, and were first rung in long peal on the occasion of George lll.’s twenty-fifth birthday in 1758. To- t day there are twelve, hanging silent in ( the belfry. A, children’s subscription, if appeal were made, would, it is suggested, no doubt set Bow Beils ringing again.

Meantime the elders might inquire what has become of the gift of John Donne, mercer, who in 1472 devised tenements in Hoster Lane, “to the maintenance of Bow Bells, the same to be rung as aforetime.”