Bell Tower - St Mary's Church, Church Road, North Creake, Norfolk, NR21 9JJ
Posted by: 
greysman
N 52° 54.296 E 000° 45.323
31U E 349042 N 5864054
An unusually large Grade I listed, 14th century village church which has a double hammer-beam roof with many painted figures. The west tower contains a ring of eight bells and one service bell.
Waymark Code: WMV69K
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/02/2017
Views: 1
This large parish church is Grade I listed and in size more akin to inner city churches. It consists of a chancel, a south porch and south door, c.1300, and a nave, north aisle, and west tower, C15th, and is built of knapped and rubble flint with stone dressings and has lead roofs. There is a Brass in the church of a civilian holding a church as its donor. This is possibly Sir William Calthorpe who claimed in his will (1495) to have rebuilt the church, giving a possible date for the clerestorey and roofs. The church was restored in 1897 by Frederick Preedy, architect, at the bequest of Bishop Lloyd, Rector 1894-1903. Hicks and Charlewood of Newcastle on Tyne made the elaborate carved and painted altar and reredos, and the Decorated style oak carved rood screen.
The west tower is perhaps of 1503 with ashlar plinth and knapped flint to the west face only. Of four stages with off-set diagonal buttresses with ashlar quoins, to the four angles. A four panel C15th west door has tracery in the spandrel panels. The fine four-light west window has a tracery head and drip mould. The small two-light square head Perpendicular window on the west face used to be the light for the ringing chamber, thankfully this chamber has been moved down to a balcony nearer ground level but this results in a long draught for the bell ropes, (see gallery for a picture). The bell chamber has four three-light Perpendicular tracery windows, one on each face. The battlemented parapet has flushwork tracery and shields whilst the inscription on the east side is attributed to Ralph Blondeville,1503. There is a sundial on the south face and a modern clock on the west face.
There are eight bells in the tower, the following is a table extracted from Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers showing the weights in kg, and the sounding notes of the bells.
Bell Weight Note Dated Founder
1 202.76 F# 2015 John Taylor & Co
2 201.40 E# 2015 John Taylor & Co
3 212.28 D# 2015 John Taylor & Co
4 220.90 C# 1744 Thomas Newman
5 253.10 B 1744 Thomas Newman
6 366.05 A# 1775 Osborn & Arnold
7 406.42 G# 1744 Thomas Newman
8 594.20 F# 2015 John Taylor & Co
Service bell 204.12 Eb 1774 Osborn & Arnold
Some details from British Listed Buildings with own on-site amendments.