Hackney
Church Tower Bell..........
I
left Ireland in
1966, came to London and
joined the police service. After three months in Police College, supposedly
learning ‘the law’ and
‘police practices’,
I found myself posted to the East
End of London – to an old police station called Hackney. Like
most of London’s ‘old’ police
stations, they have now been sold off and some converted into apartments.
It is
not apparent from the photo below but to the right of the station is a large
church. It is surrounded by an old graveyard which has been
turned into a recreation area. Hackney in those days was a very old, dilapidated and poor
area whilst it is now one of ‘the
in places’ for yuppies
to live as it is close to the City of London.
The
problem with the police service in those days was that most of the older
officers were ex-servicemen and well into their forties. They
did not want anything to do with young officers such as myself and the two or
three others who arrived there at about the same time.
If they
were tasked to take us out for ‘beat
familiarisation’ they would do everything in their power to
actually lose us in the side streets. With the poor street
lighting and regular smog of those times, one could spend the next few hours
trying to find one’s way back to base.
There
were no personal radios then and our only defense equipment was a small
truncheon, a whistle and flash light. Oddly enough you could only have a torch that held two small batteries
as anything larger was deemed to be ‘intimidating’.
Having
completed about three such weeks ‘learning
beats’ we were allowed to patrol on our own. I had a friend who joined at
the same time as I did and we would, especially on night duty, patrol as a
pair. Strictly speaking
it was not allowed but most of the supervisors turned a blind eye to the
practice.
Night duty in the
summertime was tough. It was hard to get any sleep during the
day and if the temperature remained high during the night it soon became unbearable.
If we were having a very quiet period during the three weeks night duty, we
young officers, like all young men past present and future, soon became
bored. Nothing
illegal of course, just stupid............
In the
lower corner of the churchyard stands an ancient church
tower. It was as solid as a rock and had a large street level
old oak door which was always locked.
One
morning at about 5am while we made our way back to the station to ‘book-off’, we noticed
that the door was swinging open. There were no members of the
public around. We looked in and saw a winding staircase to the roof. I suggested to my
friend that we climb to the top............
How we
did not get killed is a mystery as the crumbling staircase was covered with pigeon
muck and as slippery as ice. When we eventually got to the top
and stood on the roof the view was amazing. You could see all the way down to the Thames and St. Paul’s and places that I had never seen before……..
After a
while, I noticed a large bell hanging from an arch. It really
was big. It had no clapper or rope inside. I saw a
large piece of wood nearby. I said to my friend “What time is it?” and
he replied “Just about
6am”. “Right”
I said and grabbed the piece of wood.
I took
an almighty swing and hit the bell. The sound was extremely
loud - in fact deafening I did it another five
times. Before I had finished, my friend was practically
running down the rickety staircase and out onto
the street. I
followed and we returned to the police station and booked off duty.
I
thought nothing further about the incident until we paraded the next night at
10pm. The Inspector came
in and had a note in his hand. Apparently the local Vicar who lived
nearby in the vicarage had attended the station during the morning and
complained about some hooligans who
had broken into the tower and kept ringing the bell. “Can you keep your eyes open Mike” he
said to me, “it is on
your Beat”. “Certainly sir” I replied trying to keep
a straight face.
It was
then that he informed us that the last time the bell was rung was on Armistice Day in 1945 when
the Second World War ended. It
would not be rung again unless a Third
World War commenced.
I’ll
tell you something, the bell was certainly ‘tolled’ that night but I was very glad
that the Inspector was never ‘told’ the truth................
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