A number of years ago a friend of mine moved into a small cottage in the village of Defford in Worcestershire. The cottage is right next to the church with bits dating from the 14 century.
The Church of St James in the Parish of Defford cum Besford looks good from any angle.
Inside the church is quite charming.
And part of the duties he has taken on is the custodian of the church clock, or Village Time Lord as he prefers to call it.
The clock mechanism is around 100 years old.
And was originally powered by a hand-wound weights system that chain drives the clock but about 20 years ago this was updated to a powered electrical system to rewind the weights for the clock and chimes.
The system is quite ingenious and uses Strumey-Archer cycle hubs as the spools for the weight wires which are wound up with 28volt electrical motors.
Unfortunately for the last 18 months or so there has been an issue with the system powering the chime so Defford has lost its BONG!. And with Covid getting someone in to sort it has been a bit difficult.
While my Mate was fine with the day-today running as he as charging the battery that power the motors and adjusting the timing by adding or removing weights from the pendulum that regulates the clock and the annual oiling of the bits that need it trying to fault find on the winding mechanism has stumped him. So he called me in to take a look.
There is a book written when the mechanism was installed over 20 years ago.
Which is a big help.
But there is no substitute for getting up there. Access into the clock tower is via this old hand-built ladder.
Looking down is not much better.
Getting a first look at the mechanism was interesting.as long as you don't mind cobwebs.
After a little bit of checking it wasn’t a difficult fix the drive to the hub is through some fingers that press on a nut fixed to the hub which had come loose. So tightening them up sorted the problem for now.
So Hivers the Bongs are back but I’ll put my thinking cap on and see if I can come up with a more modern permanent solution. as long as there are no complaints at 5 am when it chimes.
