Last updated 21:56, Wednesday, 30 July 2008

THANK you for drawing attention to the proposal by the Liddesdale Heritage Association to give away the Townfoot church bell to a church in Ghana.

Looking at the picture of the bell tower (E&L Advertiser, July 17), it doesn’t take much imagination to see what it would look like if the bell were removed. It demonstrates clearly that the bell is an integral part of this historic building which began its life more than 200 years ago as Copshawholm’s first place of worship and, for almost half a century, the village’s only place of worship.

It has been argued that the bell is redundant. A better way to describe it would be to say it is under-used. It is part of the village’s heritage, it has a story attached to it and it deserves to be cherished by the Heritage Association.

The Association, of which I am a member, holds the Townfoot church building and its contents in trust for the community and has a duty to preserve items of historic interest and make them and their history accessible to researchers, local people and visitors to Liddesdale. So I call on the Heritage Association committee to reverse its decision, to retain the bell in its bell tower and to find occasions to ring the bell regularly.

I also suggest that anyone who wants the bell to stay in Newcastleton should make their views known, preferably in writing, to the committee.

Andrew Bethune

St Ives, Cambs.