Century-old bells are to be removed from a church belfry and sold to help pay for repairs to the crumbling clock tower.

The six peel at St James' Church, Silsden, are expected to raise £4,800 towards the cost of the £8,500 needed to repair the tower. The balance is being raised by the community.

But the church's bell-ringing heritage will not be lost because the famous Lady Anne Clifford bell, which has hung in the church for many years, will eventually find a new home in the repaired tower.

It will serve as a link with the late 17th Century when the bell was given to parishioners by Lady Anne Clifford, of Skipton Castle, to summon worshippers to the new church.

"It is sad that we must lose our bells and part of our heritage but in some senses we are regaining our heritage by using the Lady Anne bell," said Rev John Cooper, Vicar of St James'.

"We hope eventually to hang it in the repaired tower and use it to chime the hour."

To repair the tower and restore the bells would have cost in the region of £50,000 and after a ballot of residents it was felt it would have been difficult to raise the money by an appeal.

The bells will be removed by a Chesterfield company to be recast and rehung elsewhere. The tower was in a dangerous and deteriorating condition and the bells had not been rung since the 1960s. A report 20 years ago warned that repair work needed to be carried out even then, said Mr Cooper.

The Lady Anne Bell was hung outside the church in a frame from 1712 until 1816 when it was placed in a short tower. In 1895 it was removed and the tower built higher to accommodate the six peel. The bell returned to the Skipton Castle estate but was bought by a church representative for 10 shillings (50p) in the 1930s when the castle estate was sold off.

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