Century-old church bells are to be sold to pay for repairs to a crumbling clock tower.

The six peel at St James' Church, Silsden, are expected to raise £4,800 towards the bill of £8,500 to repair the tower. The balance is being raised by the community.

But the church's bell-ringing heritage will not be totally lost because the famous Lady Anne Clifford bell, which has hung in the church for many years, will eventually find a new home in the repaired tower. It will serve as a link with the late 17th century when the bell was given to parishioners by Lady Anne Clifford, of Skipton Castle, to summon worshipers to the new church.

"It is sad that we must lose our bells and part of our heritage, but in some senses we are regaining our heritage by using the Lady Anne bell," says the Rev John Cooper, Vicar of St James'. "We hope eventually to hang it in the repaired tower and use it to chime the hour."

To repair the tower and restore the bells would have cost in the region of £50,000. After a ballot of residents it was felt it would have been difficult to raise the money by an appeal. The tower is in a dangerous and deteriorating condition and the bells have not been rung since the 1960s, says the Rev Cooper. A report 20 years ago warned that repair work needed to be carried out even then, he says.

The bells will now be rem-oved by a Chesterfield company, re-cast, re-hung and used elsewhere.

The problem is that water has penetrated into the structure and rotted steel supports. A porch at the bottom of the tower needs rebuilding and the whole structure re-pointing.

The Parochial Church Coun-cil decided that despite the bell company being unable to remove them in the near future, the repair work to the tower will go ahead as soon as possible.

The Lady Anne Bell was hung outside the church in a frame from 1712 until 1816 when it was placed in a short tower. In 1895 it was removed and the tower built higher to accommodate the six peel. The bell returned to the Skipton Castle estate but was bought by a church representative for 10 shillings (50p) in the 1930s when the castle estate was sold off.

Lady Anne Clifford, who was born in Skipton in 1589, eventually became one of the most powerful women magnates in the north of England until her death in 1676.

She was a great benefactor, building almshouses and helping the poor throughout Craven and further west into Cumbria. She restored many properties, including Skipton Castle, which was badly damaged after the English Civil war, and Barden Tower near Bolton Abbey.

Silsden was part of her estate and she generously donated a barn to the community to use as a church. St James' church stands on the site.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.