Stanton on the Wolds All Saints

Bells

There is a single small bell, which is hung for swing chiming, in a western stone turret. A new turret was built in the 1889 restoration of the church.

The present bell was recast by Taylors of Loughborough in 1952 to replace a cracked bell by George T Oldfield of Nottingham. It bears the inscription, which includes a facsimile copy from the old Commonwealth bell:

SAM. HAKE 1661
RECAST 1952

Hymn of a Stanton Bellringer

(printed by request in 1935 Deanery magazine)

The little Church is old and grey
The ivy round it clings,
Bearing the marks of a bygone day
It dreams of Holy things.

Of days that knew no raucous scream
Of warning motor horn;
That often leaves the sweetest dream
In nightmare fragments torn.

Of men who laboured on the land
Turning the soil and clod
And knew beside the toil of hand
The soul must worship God.

And as they felt that not alone
The tired spirit faints,
But shares with all who love God’s son
They called their Church “All Saints”.

They built a spire, a little spire,
And hung within a bell,
And made themselves a little quire,
The praise of God to tell.

They placed therein an Altar Board
And lowly bowed the head,
Believing that their gracious Lord
Would come as He had said.

So in that faith they lived and died,
And in the green grass near
The bodies rest of those who tried,
Whose souls now feel no fear.

The centuries have marched along,
A newer age has come
Of flight and trains and wireless song
And traffic’s ceaseless hum.

Yet still the old grey spire looks out
Beneath the sleeping trees,
Calling to man so weak with doubt
To seek strength on his knees.

And now beside the low green mounds
A later age draws nigh;
Still “Holy, Holy, Holy” sounds
As in the days gone by.

Still stands the Altar where it stood
Eight hundred years ago;
Still men receive the Bread of God,
For Jesus taught them so.

And mine has been the happy hand
The Sanctus Bell to ring,
And send its summons o’er the land
“O Worship Christ the King”.