Sunday morning during the summer and among the events announced on a local radio station was a "festival" in a local village. A feature of the "festival" werr to be guided tours of the church tower. I like going up towers, and decided to go. After lunch (roast beef, Yorkshire pudding burned to an uneatable crisp, roast potatos, cabbage, followed by strawberries, sugar, cream) I drove twelve miles to the village. Although it was fairly close, I had never been there before. There was no problem finding the church, which was a huge building, with an enormous tower and spire. Being a graduate in medieval history (I still think of myself as "really" an historian and my job in marketing as just the way I earn a living) I took an interest in the building, which was mostly 14th century. At the back I paid 1 and a guide (one of the locals) took me up the tower. The stone steps were worn, and narrow, and unreasonably high, so that the climb upwards quickly became exhausting. Most of the staircase was in darkness (apart from the occasional tiny window), there was nothing to hold onto, and moving upwards in a tight spiral made me feel giddy. Not for the first time I thought: Why do I get myself into these situations! With relief we stopped at the clock chamber. The clock mechanism was a massive piece of machinery, dating from the 1860s, still worked by a pendulum. "The arrival of the clock changed the village forever" said the guide. "Before the clock the villagers got up when it got light, ate when they felt hungry, and went to bed when it got dark. After the clock their lives began to be much more regulated." All around the walls was graffiti - the names of local villagers through the ages, carved into the ashlar stone. More of the spiral staircase, the steps even more worn and dangerous. More relief when we stopped at the bell chamber. This room was entirely filled by a cast-iron frame holding the bells - five bells, each one about seven feet high, bulky and brooding in the semi-darkness of the bell chamber. The guide showed me a date on the oldest bell - 1600. Some of the other bells had religious inscriptions set into them. Above the bell frame rose the interior of the spire, about fifty feet in height, lit by shafts of sunlight from the openings cut into it. Although it was a still day, inside the spire there was the constant sound of rushing wind, eerie in the way it whistled and moaned. More of the spiral staircase, not so many steps this time, and a feeling of exhilaration as I stepped out onto the balcony that goes around the top of the tower. Several other people were already up on the balcony, plus a little Jack Russell dog. A mother and her small son came up the steps behind us, and out into the hot sunlight (31 centigrade). The mother looked terrified, and held onto her son's hand so tightly that I could see she was hurting him. The view was easily twenty-five miles in all directions, and the guide pointed out the tower of a cathedral on the horizon. Looking downwards, one could see the entire village and into the little worlds of the houses and gardens: Just off to the side of the graveyard was a large garden where two young families were enjoying the sun - the children in an inflatable paddling pool splashing water about, the two young mothers sunbathing in bikinis, the two fathers in just shorts, exercising with dumb-bells. "You see that house there" said the guide, pointing in a different direction. "During the war the Germans dropped bombs on the village, and Mrs Pell who lived in that cottage was holding her baby when a bomb fell in her garden. The blast wrapped both of them in the carpet they were standing on, and forced them up the chimney. Both of them survived." On the other side of the tower were two elderly villagers, obviously once romantically involved, and still regarding each other with affection. "Oh look" said the woman, a note of disappointment in her voice. "The Sibsters have taken up their tennis court. We spent so many afternoons there, playing tennis. They were such happy times when we were young." |
