Exeter, S Edmund

Bell	Weight	Note	Diam	Date	Founder	Extant	Source
1/8	4-0-x	G	26	1833	Thomas II Mears	Stolen 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
2/8	3-3-x	F#	26.5	1731	William Evans	Stolen 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
3/8	4-1-20	E	27.75	1731	William Evans	Scrapped 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
4/8	4-3-x	D	28.5	1731	William Evans	Stolen 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
5/8	5-2-x	C	30	1889	Gillett & Co	Stolen 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
6/8	7-1-0	B	34	1731	William Evans	Scrapped 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
7/8	9-1-16	A	37	1731	William Evans	Scrapped 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS
8/8	13-0-9	G	42.5	1833	Thomas II Mears	Scrapped 1970	Ellacombe, JGMS

Previously

Bell	Weight	Note	Diam	Date	Founder	Extant	Source
4/6	5-2-x	C	30	1731	William Evans	recast by William Pannell 1833	Ellacombe, JGMS
5/8	5-2-x	C	30	1833	William Pannell	recast by Gillett & Co 1889	Ellacombe, JGMS

Peals

Assisting the Police in their enquiries
A derelict church is always a sad sight, but St. Edmund’s looked the more forlorn for being surrounded by a derelict townscape, for this part of Exeter—first riverside meadow, then slummy housing, then industrial bleakness is now all being remodelled as part of the new Exe Bridge scheme. Across the road the site of the Tannery is a waste of rubble; behind the church the City Brewery is partly demolished, partly standing but derelict, beer labels swirling in wind eddies like the fallen leaves of some insane 20th century tree.
In between, the church, its red sandstone walls pierced by sightless windows shuttered with rough deal boards.
Down on the wasteland a detective-constable is waiting for us, the church keys in his hand, and in we go. St. Edmund’s had a gallery at the west end and below it a vestibule and what was once a handsome flight of stairs, but in the floor a large square hole shows where the trap-hatch to the crypt has been roughly enlarged, and scarred plaster and shattered treads on the stairs show that at least one bell has taken charge on its way down, while on the landing
above several banister rails are broken out. Says Jack: ” If somebody didn’t get hurt on this job I’ll eat my hat.”
The ringing room, its doorway stripped of its jambs, is a rubbish heap of wormy chairs and disembowelled hassocks, music books and filth, the old peal boards on the walls illegible under their dust. Above, the 18th century clock has been robbed of its brass wheels and the clock room littered
with splintered wood from the belfry floor: a clapper lies behind the clock—perhaps used to smash it.
Enough of the belfry floor has been broken up to allow some of the bells to be lowered—and to make it awkward to get on to the frame from the top of the ladder. The frame had the 2nd, 3rd and 4th hung in a top tier, but of these only the 3rd remains, protected by a difficult access to her pit. The 2nd headstock hangs empty, upside-down; the 5th also empty, one gudgeon out of its bearing; the 2nd and 4th thrown into the 6th pit, their wheels shattered. A deep scar on a roof joist shows that a rope was used to lower the treble, 2nd, 4th and 5th of the eight: a risky, foolhardy job, but the bells are gone. The wind whistles cold through the louvres and through the open trap in the roof—yes, they took some of the flashings as well.
Although there seems to be no sign of the bells in the crypt at first sight, the enlarged trap shows that the bells must have gone down that way. It’s a strange place: in the middle some mediaeval pillars support the massive floor beams of the church; on the north side a narrow doorway and passage lead to the brewery site—too narrow to get a bell through; and on the south we are looking at the north side of the 15th century Exe Bridge, one of the oldest stone bridges in England. The part which spanned the river itself is long since demolished, but here unseen more than half of the bridge still stands, the cutwater of one of its piers projecting into St. Edmund’s crypt. The arches are partly bricked up, but one can see through holes in the brickwork to where the ancient ribbed arches still carry the road above. Some excavation was done
down here a few years back and trenches and heaps of earth make it difficult to search the earthen floor.
How did the bells get out? Not through the doorway, for there isn’t room. Were
they broken up down here, then? Not a sign of a chip of bell metal anywhere. A broken crowbar, its face unrusted, a splintered wooden top from a T-headed clapper here in this pit, a heap of old mats and carpets, and . . . yes, here right in the corner an iron crown staple, a 19th century one. It must have come from the Mears 1833 treble: pretty conclusive proof that the bells were broken up down here. We show it to the detective-constable and say what it means: “They must have been pretty tidy about it, then,” he says doubtfully, but finally agrees that it makes sense.
We take a last sad look round the desolation of the church—it has been used by “dossers” for some years, and last year much of the woodwork was damaged by a fire — and head for home. The bells are gone, and nobody knows just when; the church is visited only rarely by any officer of the parish, and it may have been robbed of its bells any time since December. But on Saturday evening the detective-constable is on the phone: they’ve charged three men with the theft of the bells; 9 cwt. of metal has been found in a scrap dealer’s yard and the dealer has been charged with receiving. Yes, he says, the bells were broken up in the crypt; the men have made statements admitting it. Could I come in some time and see if I can identify the bits?
It’s Monday morning when I call at the station and the detective takes me to a
locked store in the yard. Nine small sacks are dragged out, astonishingly heavy, still tied up and labelled; we open the first and start to sort out the pieces of metal.
Pieces of soundbow come first, their music broken for ever; then a large lump
of head with its canons still intact. Then a piece of inscription band with a couple of letters and a scrap of ornament which we put on the top before turning to the next. By the time we’ve sorted through five of the sacks we have a dozen or so pieces of inscription to fit together: in the fourth was a chunk with “W.E.” flanking Evans’ bell foundry mark, and in the fifth the date 1731; the other pieces can now be fitted together roughly to make a consecutive line of inscription—that of St. Edmund’s fourth bell. An inspector and the superintendent come in to ask some questions, looking over my shoulder at the broken words on the concrete floor, and William Evans seems to look sadly, too, at a generation that robs churches and smashes his work for the sake of scrap metal—GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN W.E. 1731.
John. G. M. Scott. The Ringing World — March 27, 1970 p.240

MEN WHO STOLE CHURCH BELLS
Three Exeter men who removed bells from the disused St. Edmund’s Church and sold them for scrap were given fines totalling £320 and suspended prison sentences.
The men, Colin Michael Bond (30), lorry driver, Ronald William Hannaford (25), unemployed, and his father, William Charles Hannaford (48), lorry driver, pleaded guilty to jointly entering the church as trespassers between January 1 and February 21 and stealing four of the church’s eight bells, the property of Rev. Michael J. Morton.
Insp. D. Fowkes said that since the brewery next door became empty the now
disused church had virtually no security.
Property still in the building included a ring of eight bells, all irreplaceable and of great historic value.
In February four of the bells were found to be missing, and it was discovered that they must have been dragged into the crypt and broken into pieces before being taken away.
Press publicity resulted in information leading to the recovery, in pieces, of two of the bells from a local scrap metal merchant. But pieces from the other two bells had already gone for smelting. Ronald Hannaford admitted the theft, and after his remand on bail the other two men went to the police and admitted their part.
Statements made by the men revealed that Ronald Hannaford had first noticed the bells in the church and brought the others in to help him steal them. Tackle taken from a building site was used to lower one of the bells into the crypt where it was broken up and sold to a scrap metal merchant. At the beginning of February they stole the second bell in the same manner and on February 21 took the other two.
Visits to the scrap metal merchants were always made at night, and the men profited by £180 from the sale of the metal.
Ronald Hannaford said in his statement that the scrap metal merchant knew the metal was stolen. All three men apologised from the dock.
The chairman of the magistrates told them: “Not only were these bells of great historic value and of value to the church, but you stole them for your own greed and sold them for an enormous amount of money.”
Ronald Hannaford was fined £120 and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years; William Hannaford
and Colin Bond were each fined £100 and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years. Each of the men was ordered to pay the fine at £2 a week.
The Ringing World April 3. 1970 P.248