Bell Installation Committee

SACR is helping to find new homes for two historic sets of bells that have been acquired from churches in the West of Scotland. The churches are St. George’s North Church, Greenock and Mount Zion Church, Quarriers Village, Bridge of Weir. In total, 22 bells are involved and they have been removed from the churches and placed into safe storage with help from the Keltek Trust (www.Keltek.org). SACR is now seeking churches in Scotland that could accommodate some or all of these bells.

To help in this task, we have formed a special committee called the “New Bell Installation Committee”. This is being led by Chris Frye and current members are Bob Hancock, Terry Williams, George Cringles and Peter Whyatt. Their task is to identify two or more churches where new rings can be installed based upon the available bells from Greenock and Quarriers Village. Due to ongoing costs for storage, insurance and the cost of capital used to purchase the bells, we need to identify viable projects by August 2008.

Any church, congregation or individual interested in having a preliminary discussion about re-housing these bells should make contact with the master of SACR as per the contact details below. We would also welcome any general enquiries about the installation of rings of bells so that we could note potential interest for future reference should further options arise in future years.

The main contact for the committee is Chris Frye (master@sacr.org).

For more details of the project, a project outline document is available (Also available as a PDF).

For more details of the bells, a listing of the “bells available” can be consulted along with photos of some of the bells.

A photo of the bells leaving Quarriers Village on a lorry. Note that all of the bells are not visible because some are nested inside the larger ones.