A short report on the bell at St Augustine’s Honor Oak April 2024Hans RashbrookBellringer at St Mary’s Hendon & St Margaret PattensI viewed and inspected the bell on 20th April 2024, taking these photos, and applying some oil to the bearings and to the pulley guiding the bell rope through the belfry floor.The bell was cast at the Gillett & Johnston Bell foundry in Croydon around 1925.The bell Inscription reads:GILLETT & JOHNSTON. CROYDON. 1925.TO THE GLORY OF GODAND IN MEMORY OFPERCY WHITE COLLARD. M.A.VICAR OF THIS PARISH 1889 - 1925AND OF FANNY. HIS WIFE.O COME. ALL YE FAITHFUL.The rope is linked to a bound wire cable that is attached to one end of the bell’s half wheel. My test-pulling of the bell rope felt rather springy but I was able to chime the bell successfully with minimal swing and just a few tugs of the rope were required for the bell’s clapper to swing and strike it continually on one side.As the wheel currently has sections missing on the opposite side from the rope’s attachment (see photos) the rope cannot currently be guided along that broken side. I therefore recommend no harder pulling of the rope/swinging of the bell until the detached pieces are reapplied or replaced on the wheel.Further information on the Gillett & Johnson Foundry and bells it has cast, is available online including this link.http://www.towerbells.org/data/IXfoundryGillettJohnston.htmlPlease see report attached for more photographs.
How can Christians believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving God whilst there is so much suffering in the world? Engaging with theology, biblical study, science and philosophy, Good God offers an answer that has the potential to re-integrate Christian theology with science and philosophy for the first time since the Enlightenment.Michael Brooks writes with both 'academic rigour and pastoral sensitivity'. As a science and medicine graduate who is also an ordained minister, he makes science and theology comprehensible to those not trained in either discipline.The book opens the reader to the notion of a wonderful creation that is so full of the miraculous that this is taken for granted. Good God provides an answer to a very important question in a way that edifies faith and offers eternal hope.Michael Brooks became a Christian as a teenager and qualified as a doctor in 1981. He spent 10 years working in hospitals and then 20 years as an inner-city GP. He was ordained as a Church of England minister in 2008 and serves in the parish of St Augustine, Honor Oak Park.To see more details please go to https://www.sacristy.co.uk/books/theology/good-god
