Melsonby Church bells project & Our Community hub

Aim

Our project is to restore the church bells and encourage people of all ages to use the church as a social outlet and to learn bell ringing.

Support St James the Great Church Melsonby - Our Community Hub 

The Government’s £30,000 challenge!

See more detail on https://www.gbnews.com/news/yorkshire-church-labour-vat-reclaim and Daily Telegraph and Darlington and Stockton Times articles below.

With local help we have transformed the church into a welcoming community space for Melsonby, hosting village events, the Friday Café and Post Office, and providing new facilities including a kitchen, toilet and meeting room.

Our project is to restore the church bells and encourage people of all ages to use the church as a social outlet and to learn bell ringing.

Thanks to the community, £170,000 has already been raised and work began in December. However, in January the Government announced the withdrawal of the scheme that allows churches to reclaim VAT. This has added £30,000 to the project cost. To save the project we now need to raise this extra funding.

The history of the church that could be lost!

St James' the Great church, Melsonby, dating from 1115, is our Anglican parish church. It is united with two local churches to form the Stanwick Group of Churches. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building. The church tower hosts four bells, the oldest of these was cast in 1370 and has ‘Johanes had me made’ engraved into the metal, the next in 1718 and the latest two in 1875. 

The 4 church bells are held on worn out and dated fittings, they are very difficult to ring and having only 4 bells limits what can be rung by experienced ringers. This makes it difficult to teach and retain ringers and to attract new existing ringers. 

The Keltek Trust, a charity that rescues bells from closed churches, has offered us a set of six bells from a former church near Leeds. It is proposed to install these six bells and two newly cast bells on modern fittings to create a ring of 8 bells. The 1370 and 1718 bells will remain in the church. A new frame will allow easier access for visitors to view the bells and it is envisaged that “open days” to visit the tower will become a regular event.

This appeal is about more than just preserving history.  Bell ringing brings people together - young and old - fostering friendship, teamwork and a deep sense of belonging. For older members of our community, it offers companionship and purpose, helping to reduce loneliness and isolation.  For younger ringers, it provides a hands on link with living heritage and a chance to learn a skill that has endured for centuries.

By supporting this appeal, you will help safeguard an ancient craft as well as strengthening the social bonds that make our community so great.

Melsonby has no village hall and at a time when the Church of England is closing church buildings, we hope to secure the future of St James’ by making as much use of the church as possible, including a more numerous and active bell ringing group. The church currently holds concerts and events, has a weekly café and Post Office, hosts a book and jigsaw lending library and has a recycling centre. The meeting room is hired out for office use and meetings and a village choir hires the church on a weekly basis. 

St James' the Great church is quite uniquely on the Camino Way Ingles and as such is visited by walkers/pilgrims from all over the UK.

Investment in new bells has been shown to attract new ringers and an active bell ringing group will support the continuity of the church as a community asset and a place of worship well into the future.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made