200 Windswept night in the belfry of Rye Church

Full Episode description

Three o’clock has struck. Up steep ladders, on the top platform of the belfry inside Rye Church, the ancient clock counts through this small night hour. Its regular sound blends with long and undulating gusts of fresh sea air. Air that’s travelled, over miles of sand, shingle and marshland, from out on the open sea. 

An ever changing pressure of moving air sighs between the shuttered rafters. Rattles the steel flagpole outside on the castellated parapet wall. Resonates down inside the tower to the ringing chamber below, as a soft, dark, velvety rumble. And though without any form, not least arms and hands, somehow lifts and knocks the dead weight of a loose slab of exposed stonework. 

When the wind slackens, am amazing thing happens. Not only does the presence of moving air seem to disappear from this aural view, but much of the structure of the belfry too. A kind of transparency comes about, and a panoramic image appears. Of the surrounding landscape beyond. Subtle. More like the presence that a hanging silk curtain creates than any nameable sound. Fabric like, and thin. but definitely there. And you know when you’re hearing it because instead of the tower, you feel all that there is around you, are the panoramic murmurings of the land that is Rye and Romney Marsh.  

* Our grateful thanks again go to Revd Paul White of St Mary’s church at Rye for enabling the Lento boxes to be left to capture the quiet inside.