People
When Stella Wooldridge addressed the village's local history society in October 2005, she brought with her nearly three decades of experience in one of England's oldest traditions. Her connection with Leigh began when she moved to Charcott twenty years before that evening's talk, and by then she had already spent eighteen years as captain of the Tower at Leigh church. Her own ringing journey had started much earlier, at Hadlow, where she learnt the art some twenty-five years before she stood before the society. Life had taken her in varied directions along the way, including a period of work at Penshurst Vineyard and later employment as an Operating Theatre Assistant at Pembury Hospital, but throughout it all the bells of Leigh remained a constant.
Stella's talk ranged far beyond her personal story, reaching back to the earliest purposes of church bells. Long before clocks were commonplace, it was the bells that told people when to come to church. They marked moments of national celebration, and they tolled for deaths and funerals, sounding the shared joys and sorrows of the community. There was also a older belief attached to their sound: bells were traditionally thought to drive away evil spirits, their peals ringing out as a kind of protection over the parish.
The development of ringing itself formed another thread of the talk. In the period before medieval times, a church would typically possess just a single bell. English change ringing as we know it emerged from simpler practice: ringers first used a half-circle swing, and only later developed the full-circle ringing that gives bells their rich, controlled voice. In those earlier days, sliders and stops were fitted to prevent an over-enthusiastic ringer from pulling the bell right over — a hazard of the craft before equipment caught up with ambition. The fortunes of bells did not always rise steadily, either. When the monasteries were dissolved under Henry VIII, the number of bells in the country suffered a real reduction as so many were melted down or dispersed. Better times followed, and the period from 1660 to 1750 is remembered as the hey-day for bell casting, when founders produced some of their finest work.
Leigh's own story with bells is documented from 1636, when bells are first mentioned in the parish records. In that year the church held two bells, weighing 4 cwt and 5 cwt respectively, both cast by John Wilner, who died in 1640. The cost of those two bells had been £17/15/0 — a considerable sum for a small parish in the early seventeenth century. The Wilner name did not end there: a third bell for Leigh was cast in 1640 by Henry Wilner, who worked at the Bordon Foundry near Maidstone. The family as a whole had a connection with Ightham, tying the Leigh ring to a wider Kentish tradition of founding.
More than a century passed before the ring grew again. In 1731, the fourth and fifth bells were cast by Samuel Knight, a founder who died in 1739, not long after his work at Leigh. These two bells carried a telling inscription: 'The gift of Abraham Harrison'. Harrison had been a past owner of Hall Place, and although he had died in 1717, his will had made provision for the bells. Notably, that will stipulated that the new bells should be smaller than might otherwise have been expected, because of concern over a weak steeple. It was a practical piece of foresight from beyond the grave, and it shaped the character of the Leigh ring for well over a century.
The steeple question was eventually answered in more permanent fashion. Leigh church was restored in 1861, and the work included a stronger stone tower capable of bearing greater weight. With that problem solved, the way was clear for a major overhaul of the ring itself. In 1871, the original five bells were recast, the work being carried out by Mears & Stainbank at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, one of the great names of English bell founding. The Reverend May bore the cost, which came to £213. The recast ring of five served the parish for decades before a sixth treble bell was added in 1931, completing the ring as later generations would know it.
That addition came in an era when Leigh's bells had a memorable character at their head. Bernard Pankhurst was Captain of the Tower in the 1930s, and he lived at Chestnuts on The Green, close to the church whose bells he led. It was during the 1930s that the bells were re-hung and quarter-turned, substantial work that improved the going of the ring. The period also saw a small but significant change in who did the ringing: Lil Passingham was one of the first women to ring at Leigh. Her story took a personal turn as well, for she later became Mrs Bernard Pankhurst, uniting the tower's captain and one of its pioneering women ringers in one household.
Care of the bells continued through the twentieth century. In 1954 the bells were inspected and re-hung, and a further inspection took place in 1978. On that later occasion a decision was taken to leave the wooden headstocks in place rather than replace them with cast iron ones, so the fittings retained something of their older character. Joan Collins was Captain of the Tower at the time of the 1978 inspection, carrying on the line of leadership that had run from Bernard Pankhurst through to Stella Wooldridge's own eighteen years as captain.
One intriguing footnote from Stella's talk concerns bells that may never have belonged to Leigh at all — or perhaps always did. At Bidborough church, two bells remain from what was once a ring of four or five. The missing Bidborough bells are reportedly said to have gone to Leigh, though the claim rests on local report rather than firm record. If true, it would mean that part of Leigh's ring carries a hidden history from across the neighbouring parish, a reminder of how bells, like the communities that ring them, have moved and changed over the centuries. From John Wilner's seventeenth-century castings to the Whitechapel recasting of 1871 and the additions and renewals of the twentieth century, the bells of Leigh tell a story of parish life, generous benefactors, careful craftsmen and the devoted ringers who have kept them sounding across nearly four hundred years.