Bells feud church rings changes

The sacked bell master declined to stay under new leadership

A team of bell ringers has been sacked from a 1,000-year-old church after refusing to play at modern services featuring "silly songs".

The vicar at the Church of St Nicholas in Leeds, Kent, admitted there was a feud between rival bell-ringing groups.

He said he had been left with "no option" but to replace his bell master and his team with a new group.

Ousted bell master Chris Cooper, 25, complained after his equipment was left dumped on his doorstep.

'Extremely strong letters'

The Reverend Robert Gill said Mr Cooper annoyed churchgoers by refusing to play the bells at modern services and demanding the reintroduction of traditional services based on the Book of Common Prayer.

Mr Gill said: "He knows why this problem began.

"He wrote some extremely strong letters to the church council.

We were dismissed for being too traditional... you would expect more of a Christian church Chris Cooper

"What we're saying at the church level is that we want someone to ring the bells for all services.

"We have not used the Book of Common Prayer at St Nicholas for 20 years, so Mr Cooper must have known that when he joined."

Mr Cooper, who works for the Inland Revenue, had rung bells at the church for five years.

He said he wrote a letter in July complaining that traditions had been eroded.

He said: "I put that the Church of England was going downhill because it's all being modernised - they obviously didn't like what I had to say.

"We were dismissed for being too traditional.

"You would expect more of a Christian church."

Mr Cooper said a pile of his equipment had been left on the doorstep of his home in Deal in August, making him realise he was no longer welcome.

But Mr Gill said that incident was nothing to do with the church and blamed it on the row between the two factions.

Mr Cooper said the vicar had invited him to continue ringing the bells under the new bell master Chris Saunders, but he said there was too much bad feeling to do so.