14/05/2021
The Ellacombe Chimes - St Peter’s Joins International Celebration.
The year was 1821 and the Reverend Mr. Henry Thomas Ellacombe, Vicar of St Mary’s in Bitton near Bristol, was not a happy cleric. The bellringers at his church were, to put it mildly, unruly. He already had a dim view of ringers before he moved to Bitton but the ones there took the biscuit. Their shortcomings included excessive drinking, swearing, lewdness, squabbling, brawling, seldom attending church services and refusing to ring or ringing badly because they felt that their fee was too small. To cap it all, they would sometimes ring peals just for fun or for anyone who would pay them, contrary to his view that church bells should only be rung for church services.
However, Rev. Ellacombe was not a man to take things lying down and he decided that the simple solution was for one trusted person to ring all the bells. The one flaw in this cunning plan was that it was virtually impossible for one person to ring all the bells. Undeterred, the Vicar drew on his four years’ engineering training at Chatham dockyard and designed a frame containing ropes linked to hammers that could be used by one person to play all the bells. In traditional ringing the clappers strike the bells as the bells are swung by pulling on the ropes; in chiming the bells are stationary and are struck by rope-operated hammers.
The Ellacombe chimes came into being in 1821 and the first set was installed in Bitton church the following year. Not only could they be played solo, but it was also possible to play tunes - no doubt hymn tunes only, in the case of Bitton - on them. The chimes became very popular nationally and in some other countries but fell out of favour because people preferred the traditional resonant clang of clappers striking to the lighter tone of the Ellacombe hammers chiming. Marked improvement in bellringers’ reliability and behaviour probably also played its part in the decline. Many sets of chimes were removed but there are believed to be around 400 still remaining in the UK and 40 overseas, including a set in an unusually tall frame at St Peter’s. Almost all chimes are played whilst standing, but the ones in Ightham are played seated.
Rev. Ellacombe died aged 90 in 1885. Throughout his life he criticised ringers who rang for any reason other than church services. He particularly disliked prize ringing, in which bands of ringers held competitions accompanied by social events, and was deeply unimpressed by those who condoned or promoted these. In his column in the magazine Church Bells in 1875 he launched a diatribe against a competition at a church in Slapton, Devon, thundering “We blame the Vicar and churchwardens for allowing the bells to be so prostituted for the benefits of a publican’s pocket”.
Rev. Ellacombe was an energetic parish priest who was also instrumental in the restoration of St Mary’s and the building of three further churches. He was regarded as the first scholarly campanologist, publishing many works on bells and ringing, and also found time to produce a catalogue of trees and shrubs in the vicarage garden and a record of 5000 plants that he had grown successfully. He married three times and raised six children.
200th Anniversary Celebration Chiming
On 26th June St Peter’s will be taking part in an international celebration of the 200th anniversary of the invention of the chimes. Starting at Timaru Basilica in New Zealand and ending in Vancouver, Canada, more than 80 churches around the world will ring their Ellacombe chimes at noon local time. We hope to be able to open the church for this event and to give a short talk about the bells and chimes. More details will follow on the pages of St Peter’s Church Ightham, St Peter’s Ightham Bells and Friends of St Peter’s, Ightham
