Not a sound is heard
But at St Peter’s Anglican church on Willis Street from whose handsome gothic steeple you’d expect to hear bells boom out in defiance of those other bells, they don’t ring at all.
They’ve never been been rung properly, not in the 132 years they’ve hung there. The last time they were gently chimed was at the turn of the millennium in 2000.
St Peter’s was built in 1879, a replacement for the first small plain wooden church which had occupied the site since 1848. To cope with an expanding population the old church had been altered so often that the building had become “a large straggling, disproportionate, shapeless deformity.”
By 1875 planning for a new St Peter’s had begun in earnest. Prominent local architect Thomas Turnbull was hired to draw up the plans.
The new church had to be imposing amongst the surrounding residential buildings, it had to be large enough for a congregation of 1000 parishioners, and it had to have a steeple with a full peal of bells to be imported from England.
Turnbull drew up designs for a brick building, a gothic revival structure, plainly styled, with a fine steeple. But church elders were not keen. It could have been the cost, or perhaps memories of the earthquake which had devastated Wellington in 1848. The first wooden St Peter’s had withstood the shaking and for several weeks sheltered residents left homeless when surrounding brick and clay houses had collapsed. Whatever the reason, a battle was fought over the construction material to be used. Turnbull eventually capitulated. The church would be constructed of heart kauri and clad in rusticated weatherboards, and it would retain the steeple outlined in Turnbull’s original plans.
On 7 May 1879 the foundation stone was laid and building commenced. Fundraising continued. Money was raised for a set of eight bells for the steeple and an order made to bell makers Warners of London. At St Peter’s a society of bell ringers was formed and they enthusiastically practised on handbells in preparation for the great day. The bells arrived on schedule and were lifted and placed in the church tower.
All was ready for December 21, when the new church would be consecrated by the Bishop of Wellington Frederick Wallis, all ready that is until the bells were rung for the first time.
It was only then discovered that the tower was too small. The bells could not be swung the required 360 degrees known as ‘full circle ringing’ to enable them to be pealed as they were designed to do, When they tried to do so the whole steeple vibrated so wildly it was feared the whole structure would come down. The St Peter’s society of bellringers was redundant almost before it had begun.
To this day the bells of St Peter’s continue to hang in their 1879 tower unpealed, although until 1957 they were chimed like a clock in the manner of a carillon. They were last chimed on the New Year’s Eve of the new millennium.
Niels Reinsborg
Have Your Say
0 Comments
No comments.