Not a topic we would have ever normally considered in relation to Serres and The Dropt. But a chance encounter with French historian Alain Corbin’s book “Village Bells – Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-century French Countryside” has made us aware of the changing nature of the auditory landscape.
Even in as recently as 2014 events have transpired to support some of Corbin’s hypotheses. At the beginning of that year the Serres bells were rung thrice a day at 7am, 12am and 7pm. Depending on one’s point of view the times represented the Angelus or the “Points du Jour”. Later there was a period of campanarian void and now, fortunately, the bells have been reinstated. The three Angelus rings are now 8am, 12am and 7pm with hourly rings in the “missing” hours between 7am and 9pm.