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Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Villagers furious after church banned from ringing 'nuisance' 177-year-old bells following complaints from neighbour
A village church has been deemed a 'nuisance' and forced to silence its chiming clock after being slapped with a council order - following 'a ridiculous villager complaint'. St Michael's in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, was stunned to receive an abatement notice about its beloved clock bells. The church was ordered to silence the chiming between 11pm and 7am after being notified of a complaint from a disgruntled resident of the proud village. Traditionally the clock - a staple in the village for up to 177 years - has rung out the full Westminster chimes, with four quarter bells that chime every 15 minutes and a bell that strikes on the hour. A £2,500 device would be needed to limit the bells to only chiming at night - so in order to comply with the Calderdale Council order, the bells have temporarily fallen silent for the first time in more than a century. Now devastated residents of the village - birthplace of poet Ted Hughes - have slammed the decision and set up an online petition to reinstate the bells, claiming they're 'the soundtrack of our community's daily life'. Roy Wrathall, who's been a church warden at St Michael's for nine years, said the church was there 'for everybody' so they would comply with the notice. 'We don't have the facilities to silence overnight,' he said. An online petition calling for the church bells to be allowed to peal again has attracted 1,296 signatures 'There's very much two sides to it. 'There's "I'm awake in the night, there goes the clock, that reassures me" and "I can't get to sleep because I keep hearing that clock every 15 minutes". 'It's not an easy one to resolve. 'Wearing the church hat - we're there for everybody, so we'll do what the law says we have to do and do our best to try and please as many people as we can. 'The only way we can comply between 11pm and 7am is to stop the chimes. 'The clock's still going but the chimes have stopped.' The eerie silence has been a particular blow as many locals associated the return of the chimes with the village recovering from devastating floods which also inundated the church in 2015. 'There was several feet of water in there - right by the river and houses around the same,' Mr Wrathall said. 'There was no electricity, no street lights and there was no clock going in the church so there were no chimes, it was silent. 'One of the things that was a sign of recovery to a lot of people was when the clock started chiming again, things were getting back to what they viewed as the norm. 'There are people who still find the clock during the night reassuring, but equally there's someone down in the village who it doesn't work like that for.' Furious locals have set up a petition to reinstate the bells, which has racked up 1,296 signatures. The petition reads: 'Growing up in the heart of Mytholmroyd, the sound of St Michael's church bells ringing through the village has been a cherished part of my life. 'These bells have chimed since 1848, long before any of us were here - a symbol of continuity and community for over a century. 'My family's roots run deep in this village, and for us, as for numerous other residents, the chimes are more than bells - they are the soundtrack of our community's daily life. 'We propose that Calderdale council reconsider their decision and engage with the community to find a solution that satisfies both the individual who raised the complaint and the majority of village residents. 'Solutions such as soundproofing options for the complainant's residence. 'Preserving these bells means preserving our history and community. St Michael's Church says it has been left with no choice but to silence the chimes 'completely' following 'a complaint from a neighbour' 'Their sound is a legacy we must protect for future generations. 'Support our campaign to keep the bells of St Michael's ringing in Mytholmroyd.' One supporter wrote: 'Born and bred in Mytholmroyd, still my home in my heart. 'The bells of Saint Michael's need to be heard, not silenced.' Another commented: 'Growing up in the 'Royd those bells were my clarion call to get home for dinner. 'With the bells silenced I worry about the poor children who may starve for lack of eating dinner. 'I feel that 177 years of the bells ringing being silenced by one objector is ridiculous.' Calderdale Council says it has received 'several complaints from local residents about the noise of the church clock chime overnight, and the substantial impact it was having on their quality of life'. 'We investigated the complaints in line with our legal duty, and this involved identifying whether the noise was causing a substantial or unreasonable impact on the quality of life of those who had complained,' said Danielle Durrans, cabinet member for public services and communities. 'The noise from churches and other similar establishments is something that many councils across the country have had to investigate. 'We understand how much local people value heritage and the tradition of the church clock. 'However, the evidence from our investigation showed that the regularity and volume of the bell chiming, at the time of night when people are sleeping, was causing a substantial impact, so we had no option but to determine a statutory nuisance and serve an abatement notice requiring the chimes not to operate between 11pm and 7am. 'We have received no appeals against the abatement notice, and the decision to stop the chiming during the day as well as night-time was taken by the town council and Erringdon Benefice.'
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I went to a death cafe – and learned how to live a much happier life
'Are you afraid of dying, or are you afraid of not living?' Last year, I was sitting in a circle of strangers – half Buddhist monks, half morbidly curious members of the public – when someone asked one of the most profound questions I had ever heard. I was at a 'death cafe', at my local Buddhist centre in south London. A plate of biscuits was passed around while people nursed mugs of hot tea. At 29, I was one of the youngest attending the informal chat about death and dying, which was part of an initiative to encourage more open conversations about the ends of our lives. During the session, people reflected on the lives of those they had lost. Stories were shared about the joyful moments they had had together. A woman asked me why I would want to come to something like this, at my age. I looked around before revealing more than I had ever told my own friends and family. I began to talk about how, for a long time, I had considered suicide. Throughout my late teens and early 20s, I was stifled by my thoughts and anxieties, and often felt misunderstood. After receiving professional help (and an autism diagnosis), I became plagued with guilt and shame that I hadn't embraced how precious life actually was. I felt regretful for wasting what some people call the best years of their life. I decided to say yes to every opportunity in a bid to catch up on everything I had missed. I took on endless creative projects, went on holidays, wrote books and scripts, made films, and hosted dinner parties. I'd gone to the death cafe after seeing a poster advertising the meetings. That day, I shared how I'd often fixated on milestones as a way to measure my success, and how I would compare myself with others and feel like a failure. We laughed as we acknowledged how these milestones, like university degrees or property ownership, were never used as a way to describe people who had died. I realised that my newfound zest for life also had its downsides: I felt burnt out, and I hadn't given myself enough time to savour moments before moving on to something else. After a career in acting, I had become a published journalist almost overnight, but instead of celebrating my new commissions, I gauged my success as a writer by counting how many articles I had written. Similarly, I had acted in multiple major TV productions, but panicked when I didn't have the next one lined up. I'd spend eight hours making the perfect cake for a friend's birthday but then be exhausted for the event itself. 'The journey is the best bit,' smiled one of the older strangers in the room. 'The fun is not knowing what might happen.' I realised that my fear of not living meant my ego was fuelling my choices. My desire to be successful came from my insecurities about feeling like a failure to others. So I needed to focus on how things made me feel, not just how great they looked or sounded to strangers. My shame over my mental health had made me defensive, as if I owed everyone an explanation as to why I made certain choices. But at the death cafe, I realised that I could thrive in imperfection. During that evening I met people who were ill, people who believed in reincarnation, parents who had lost children, and a woman who cared for the dying. While many of the questions we had about death were answered, we had to accept that not all of them could be. Before we left, we hugged. I felt a sense of peace flood over me as I realised that I no longer needed to seek validation from others. Instead, I chose to accept myself and embrace my past. Rather than believing that saying yes to everything is the best way to live life to the fullest, I've become more open about communicating my boundaries. I've become a much more patient person, too, and try to be more present when spending time with people. While this shift away from pleasing people means I've lost some friends, I've also gained a stronger bond with others. Since my first visit, I have continued to return to death cafes all over London, meeting new people and having new conversations about death over tea and cake. In truth, I feel more alive than ever for doing so. Elizabeth McCafferty is a journalist who writes regularly for the Guardian In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
Telegraph
7 hours ago
- Telegraph
David Frost is wrong about the Elgin Marbles
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands… The campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles began almost from the moment of their removal. Byron's lines have been quoted for two centuries by restitutionists. If there were a way to restore the mouldering shrines to the Parthenon itself, it would surely have happened by now. Who could resist making whole the Temple of Athena? There would be no need for long-term loans. My colleagues Lord Frost and Baroness Debbonaire would not be insisting that their surrender would be 'good diplomacy'. But there is no way to restore them to the original structure. All sides agree that those magnificent metopes and pediments – bleached and numinous yet, at the same time, eerily realistic with their flowing robes and flared horses' nostrils – need to be preserved indoors. A few carvings have found their way into collections in Paris, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna and Würzburg. But most are housed either at the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009, or at the British Museum. The argument is therefore whether to move them from one museum to another, which raises the question of what makes a successful museum. I would set the following tests. Where will any given artefact be most carefully looked after? Where can we best appreciate its cultural impact? Where is it most accessible to specialists and scholars? Where will the largest number of people get the greatest pleasure from seeing it? The Greeks unquestionably have a great location. To admire those white Pentallic stones on the slopes of the Acropolis, glimpsing its heights through the windows, is quite an experience. But the British Museum is the most visited museum in the world (at least if we count the Louvre as a gallery rather than a museum). Museums, as the etymology implies, are secular temples to the muses, those ancient goddesses who inspired sublime feelings in mortals. They were designed to raise the spirits of the masses, not only to spread knowledge, but also to elevate artistic sensibility. The British Museum has been carrying out that function since the mid-18th century, and in a remarkably universalist spirit. It was the first public institution to call itself 'British', yet it never saw its vocation as national. It was intended from the start to be encyclopaedic, a place to display curios from every culture. This universality is rarer than people realise. Most museums have a national or ethnic focus. In Washington DC, for example, you will find the National Museum of the American Indian, the Chinese American Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the British Museum, as its former director Neil MacGregor put it, 'remains a unique repository of the achievements of human endeavour, and there is no culture, past or present, that is not represented within its walls. It is truly the memory of mankind.' If our aim is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, there is a good case for keeping the stones divided, and using modern technology to fill in the gaps with exact replicas (the Acropolis Museum currently represents the missing stones with deliberately rough plaster casts so as to emphasise its grievance). But this is not really about aesthetics. It is about nationalism, and the desire of successive Greek administrations to claim a direct link to the ancient city states. And here, I part ways with my House of Lords colleagues. For demands that rest on collective racial entitlements are incompatible with freedom, property and the rights of the individual. Commentators are often conflicted about these ethnic claims. The kinds of people who insist on performing indigenous land recognition ceremonies in Canada and Australia would be horrified at the idea that second-generation immigrants to Britain were here contingently. Yet free contract rules out ancestral claims. If my grandfather sold his house to yours, I have no right to turf you out. There is no question that the British Museum purchased the collection legally from Lord Elgin, who had acquired it with the full permission of the authorities. Elgin had not at first intended to remove the carvings. He wanted to sketch and measure them, but changed his mind when he saw passers-by carting them off. 'The Turkish government attached no importance to them,' he told a parliamentary committee. 'Every traveller coming added to the general defacement of the statuary in his reach.' Elgin saved the stones. Free contract and private property trump the superstitious idea that being descended from someone, or at least living in the same part of the world, establishes some kind of ownership right. If the Acropolis Museum wants the collection, it should put in an offer. Frankly, the way Britain is going, we might soon need the money.
