Let the bells resound!

After several years of fundraising, bellringers at St Mary's Church, Pembroke, have finally reached their target and an ambitious scheme to return the church bells to working order is under way. Tower Captain Anne Bunker is excited.

A grant of £154,000 by Pembrokeshire County Council from the Levelling Up Fund (LUF) was the final piece in the jigsaw.

The LUF will enable us to get the bells back up the tower and ringing again by the new year, if we keep up the hard work.

Bells have rung in the church of St. Mary since the 1760s but were allowed to get in a terrible state. Notoriously challenging to ring and out of tune, the bells needed significant work to save them and improve them to the standard the historic Norman tower deserves.

Pembroke bellringers, donors, supporters, St Mary’s church warden Marcia and officers of the St Davids Diocesan Guild of Bellringers were privileged to watch the three new bells being cast at the John Taylor foundry in Loughborough.

The larger of the three is to replace the old second bell which was out of tune with the other seven. The old second was cast by Charles and John Rudhall of Gloucester in 1784 and will be retained as a teaching bell.

To have the treble and second bells cast next to each other is a lasting testament to the contribution of two families to ringing at Pembroke and their dedication to the ancient art of change ringing.

The new treble is dedicated to the Lingard family; ten members have rung the bells at St Mary’s during the past 65 years and continue to do so today.

Bell three is cast in Lesley Morgan’s name. Her husband Christopher learned to ring as a teenager and returned to ringing in Pembrokeshire after a 46 year gap. Lesley recently took up the art to join her husband and together they ring at Cardigan. The bell is a celebration of love after 46 years of marriage and being together

All the bells have now been tuned and two weeks of hard work with Bell Hanger Peter Hayward and a team of volunteers means the three replacement floors are now ready for the bells to be returned. Meanwhile, work is under way making the bell frame, casting headstocks, creating wheels and other new parts.