In the Cake

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The climb to the bell of Litchfield's Congregational Church began with a tall ladder from a room above the vestibule. April led the way, I followed, and Ray went last. We squeezed sideways through an opening in the main pediment behind the portico, grabbing hold of a structural bar to pull ourselves up into a large room in the base of the tower and somewhere in front of the sanctuary dome. My backpack only fit through the opening after it was off my back. I slid it backward and Ray passed it up to me, and I decided to continue the climb with just camera and tripod. 

As we came through the opening, the Seth Thomas tower-clock mechanism was directly over us, but as I try now to figure where we were, I have to guess the clock face was higher up. The old, wooden columns and beams of the box tower were above - below - around us, but the tower had been reinforced by a framework of steel beams in a manner that left the old structure unscarred. We continued up a steep, wooden stair around the tower’s perimeter to a second aluminum ladder which slid as we climbed through a trap door above to the railed space at the top of the square tower and stood in a wedding cake homage to Christopher Wren and English style. 

As much as I was eager to see the bell, I was immediately distracted in discovering that the floor was not level, as I expected, but pitched to throw off rain, and the railing was neither as high nor as strong as I had imagined. However, I was struck by how dark the bell was and, apparently, weatherbeaten. As Ray was still climbing out of the hatch, I turned to the view from the tower, mostly tree-tops now, and began taking pictures and forgot all the questions I had wanted to ask.

April invited me to ring the bell which I did too cautiously, but it chimed once, solidly. As the picture shows, there is no headstock to set the bell swinging, no clapper to swing and strike it, no swing at all - a pivot hammer. My ears are no longer reliable, but after my moderate strike I heard a clear note; a baritone knell prolonged and bounded with an edge as crisp as the most finely focused photograph. The bell, though not original, is venerable. It was cast by Paul Revere and came from a church in Goshen that was demolished.