[SACR Members] Bells from St George's North, Greenock and Mount Zion Church, Quarriers Village.

[Chris Frye]

To: SACR Tower Correspondents (for tower notice boards) and
To: SACR Members (direct via e-mial list)

You will probably have heard something already about the 2 chimes of bells
that have become available from the Church of St George's North, Greenock
and Mount Zion Church, Quarriers Village. The 22 bells involved have now
been removed and are avilable for rehanging in new bell projects in
Scotland. Your SACR committee has formed a new (sub)committee that will
oversee our efforts to identify projects. We are now busy trying to find new
homes for up to 4 new rings of bells!

For more details of the bells and what is going on, here is a link to some
new pages on the SACR website.
http://www.sacr.org/bellinstallation/index.htm. We are just about to launch
our publicity into the central church organisations to try to generate
interest.

Please could I ask that if any of you, our members, have any specific link
with or involvement in churches that could take a ring of bells, then I
would be very grateful if you could let me know. We could then plan how to
make a specific approach. To guide you just a bit, we have prepared a few
points for churches to bear in mind as they consider whether they could
house any of these bells. These points are listed at the end of this
message.

Please note that we have a range of bell weights available from a 4cwt tenor
up to 18cwt. The lighter rings could be housed in a relatively lightly built
tower.

When trying to set up a project to install a new set of bells, experience
shows that it makes a big difference to have an existing ringer with a
strong interest and perhaps already present within a church or community.
You can be our best ambassadors for this task, so please do take time to
think of places where these bells can be rehoused.

Thanks in anticipation,

Chris Frye
Master at SACR.org


There are 4 main requirements for churches interested to re-house these
bells:

(i)	Firstly there must be a desire and commitment to acquire and maintain a
set of bells. Similar to organs, bells are a long-term investment for a
church and it is quite usual for bell installations to last for well over a
century. While most churches possess at least one bell for calling people to
services, the sound of a full ring of bells announces the church’s presence
in the community in a much more effective and audible way.
(ii)	Some sort of existing tower is required to house the bells. For the
heavier ring of bells this will need to be of substantial construction. For
the lighter options, smaller less massive towers may be acceptable. A new
purpose built tower is also possible, but this would add extra cost to any
project.
(iii)	Sufficient funds will need to be raised in order to cover the costs of
acquisition and installation. While bells are not in general as expensive as
pipe organs, costs range from a few tens of thousands of pounds upwards.
Bell projects attract funding from a variety of sources such as lottery
funds and donations from trusts. SACR itself maintains a bell restoration
fund and would normally award a substantial grant towards the installation
costs for a new ring of bells.
(iv)	Finally, a new ring of bells will require ringers to be trained. Again,
SACR has experience of this and would normally provide assistance. Automatic
chiming systems are also available should ringers not be available.