Bells

The bell of the 18th Century Chapel of Ease was famous locally because it was hung, not in a tower, but in an adjacent oak tree, which produced the local rhyme:

The further you go the more you see
A Church without a steeple and a bell hung in a tree.

When the new church was built in 1859 there was still no tower, but the old bell remained in its tree until 1887 when Taylors of Loughborough cast a ring of 6 bells for the tower, which had been added two years previously as a memorial to Augustus Henry, Sixth Baron Vernon. The bells hang in a composite timber and cast iron frame, with the name of the founder and the date appearing on the waist of the front 5 bells. The Tenor is inscribed:

(shoulder)
LAUS DEO PAX HOMINIBUS

(waist)
IN MEM AUG H VERNON DOM
KAL FEB MDCCCLXXXVII
J: TAYLOR & Co FOUNDERS LOUGHBOROUGH 1887

The bells were re-hung in ball bearings by Taylors in 1936