We were ringing on five tonight as our tenor bell isn’t all that securely attached to its headstock! Just two bolts and those a bit wobbly and we weren’t going to ring it up to check the bolts inside!
Later at the pub we were thinking of thought provoking questions for the Year 2 children on their new portal (e.g. “What if vegetables had legs?”) – most of us have an interest in education (some teachers, some governors, some trainers and some mothers or all of the above!). I’m surprised one of the questions wasn’t “What if the Tenor had come unbolted while we were ringing?” but perhaps we had already covered that. The collapse of the Saxon arch was the most extreme consequence we came up with (and we were avoiding anything gruesome) the trajectory going through the tower wall and into the chancel roof…! That’s the arch described by Christopher Winn in I never knew that about England thus:
…three supreme Saxon arches built over 1000 years ago when Sussex was remote and savage. The chancel arch is the LARGEST SAXON ARCH SURVIVING IN BRITAIN, possibly the world, and an incomparably beautiful masterpiece.
Chances are of course that it would have gone the other way and taken out the 5 or just landed on the ceiling (which might bear its weight depending on the speed of fall) but that was less imaginative.
