[Crimson Dynamo]

West Yorkshire church forced to stop chiming bells after noise complaint from 3 residents

A village church has been forced to silence its chiming bells for the first time in nearly 180 years.

St Michael’s in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, was given a notice by the council to silence chiming between 11pm and 7am in April because of a series of complaints submitted by three disgruntled residents.

The clock, which has been a village fixture for 177 years, does the full Westminster chimes with bells that chime on the quarter hour and another that strikes on the hour.

It is not possible to pause the chiming at night until a costly device is fitted, so the bells have fallen silent in order to comply with the Calderdale council order.

Many villagers were appalled by the decision and have set up an online petition to reinstate the bells, which they described as “the soundtrack of our community’s daily life”.

Calderdale council said it had received complaints from three households about the chiming overnight.

Roy Wrathall, who has been a church warden at St Michael’s for nine years, said: “We don’t have the facilities to silence overnight.

“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’.

Villagers have set up a Change.org petition to reinstate the bells, which has received 1,296 signatures.

The petition states: “These bells have chimed since 1848, long before any of us were here – a symbol of continuity and community for over a century.