We are delighted to learn that Blythe & Co. Ltd have been awarded a Sussex Heritage Trust Award 2024 for the Restoration Bells Project, at Piddinghoe. The award was presented at the charity’s Annual Awards Lunch at Lancing School’s historic Chapel, and we congratulate Blythe for their excellent work in this field and for restoring our beautiful bells and bell tower.
Judges’ Comments
On visiting your project the judges said:
“An exceptional project and an example of significant ingenuity in introducing a new bell frame for an augmented ring of six bells, while retaining the historic bell frame. This is a project with considerable benefit to the local community of all ages, as change-ringing and hand bell ringing spread up and down the Ouse Valley.”
This special award category for Ecclesiastical Buildings is sponsored by Valley Builders. It is for a restoration, repair, conversion, or development scheme that improves all or part of the building and maintains its ecclesiastical and consecrated status.
St John the Evangelist Church, on the Village Green at Piddinghoe, is an early 12th-century church with one of only three round towers in the South of England. The church was awarded £34,000 from the National Heritage Lottery to restore and transform the 18th-century bells and add three additional treble bells. The Keltek Trust kindly donated the extra bells, and further monies raised helped to support this mammoth project.
Piddinghoe Church now has six bells divided between the two floors of the tower. These were rehung on two unique steel frames in the bell tower. The original wooden frames have been kept and are now displayed in the church.
Sussex Heritage Trust Awards 2024
The Sussex Heritage Trust was established in 1977 to preserve, improve, and encourage appreciation of Sussex’s architectural and natural landscape. Their awards have been running for 26 years and are growing from strength to strength, receiving 94 entries in 2024.