Still hitting the right notes after 177 years

Suzanne Kelsey visits Britain's oldest bellhangers

The millennium year was a big one for church bells, ringing in the new and ringing out the old. And for F R Whites of Appleton, in Oxfordshire, it was a busier one than usual in the 177 years that have been spent in the business of bellhanging.

The firm, which is the oldest continuously trading company of bellhangers in Britain, was founded in 1824 by Alfred White, and run as part of his blacksmith's business at the Greyhound Inn in the nearby hamlet of Besselsleigh. Innkeeping and bellhanging might sound an unlikely combination, but as Brian White, the present head of the business, explains, the Greyhound was a coaching inn on the main road from Oxford to the West Country and, as such, had a blacksmith's forge along- side, where horses could be shod.

These blacksmiths would also do a great deal of agricultural and other work in their neighbourhood, and be skilled in many aspects of the trade. Alfred became interested in bellringing and realised he could make a living by specialising in this type of work.

Transport of the bells in those early days would have been by horse-drawn wagons, and later made easier by the extension of the    railway network. Almost from the start, Alfred was hanging bells all over the country,    including undertaking projects at several cathedrals. He was the first of five generations of  the family who have kept up the tradition he established.

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