Monday, October 1, 2018

Escape from the Tower, or What the Landlord’s Daughter Saw…

The tower at All Saints church has particular memories for me relating to a tower key and the church clock.  This was in 1958.

Here is my story about this particularly key.  Chas and I were about 14 at the time.  Chas - the son of the then verger - and I had been given the task of winding up the church clock on the way home from school on Wednesdays.  One particular day we unlocked the tower as usual and climbed up to the ringing chamber to carry out the task, but forgot to take the tower key with us.

On descending about 15 minutes later, we were horrified to find that someone had discovered the tower ‘unlocked’ and had undertaken to turn the key and put it back in its appropriate storage place. We stood at the wrong side of the tower door, wondering if we could find another way of getting out of our predicament.

Escape for us was quite involved as it was necessary to climb back to the ringing chamber and search in a huge chest for a spare bell rope. Having found one we proceeded to climb the small ladder which led out onto the church roof.  A further couple of ladders took us on to a lower roof of the vestry, where the rope was attached to the roof battlements and dropped to the ground. 

By sliding down the rope a distance of about 25 feet we were on the ground, and essentially out! All these antics were observed by the daughter of the landlord at the Windmill Pub next to the church, with accompanying applause.

The rope now had to be recovered from the vestry roof. So, back into the church, find the key, climb the steps back to the ringing chamber, up the ladders again, recover the rope and return it to the chest.

Having descended we put key back in appropriate place, went home and said NOTHING!

 

David Taylor

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