Weekend Working

photo of bellframe Much of the work continued every weekend with volunteers being taught how to do many of the jobs that were needed. Some of the pupils specialised in different aspects of the bell project to provide a major part of their GCSE course work.

The big day arrived to prepare the holes for the end of the main steel girders - a memorable Saturday, when volunteers mixed hundreds of buckets of concrete which were then pulleyed up from the porch of St Mary's, through the trap doors to the top of the tower to form the bearing pads.

The work went on until the early hours of Sunday morning. I can still remember the shouts of joy when chocolate biscuits and flasks were hoisted instead of concrete!

Back at Warlingham School, the two-tier frame weighing 5 tonnes and now too large for the workshop, together with the eight bells, was erected in the school grounds. At a special assembly the Bishop of Croydon came to bless the frame and the bells. The following weekend it all had to be dismantled and transported to St Mary's in readiness for the installation.