Downtowns need a good, loud church bell - and Sanford now has one, once again

I drove by North Parish Congregational Church on Main Street in Sanford at just the right moment one recent Sunday morning. For the first time in quite some time, I heard the bell ringing from the church’s iconic clock tower and steeple.

That’s nice, I thought. I rolled down my car window just a bit to hear the bell better. Since parishioners were filing into the church, I figured the bell was simply announcing the start of that Sunday morning’s service.

Later, I found out that the bell was announcing every hour on the hour too. According to Becky Brown, the church’s office administrator, the church’s trustees had agreed to have the clock and bell fixed and hired David W. Graf Tower Clock Repair to do the job. Parishioners Fred and Barbara Boyle were significant contributors to the restoration of the clock and chimes.

How long had the bell been silent and had the clock been stopped, doomed only to be correct twice each day? That’s anybody’s guess.

“It must be a decade, at least, because I do not ever remember hearing the bells,” Becky told me in an email.

I would go back even further, although I’m not sure by how much. All I know is that I grew up down the street from the church and at some point felt saddened that its bell stopped ringing.

Not that the bell has been silent all these years. One Christmas Eve a few years ago, my nephew and I took a walk through my old neighborhood, as Mom still lives in the house where I grew up. When North Parish Church’s holiday service ended at about 8:30 or so, the bell started to ring throughout the downtown. Immediately, I stopped in my tracks and listened. I felt an immediate nostalgic rush. I closed my eyes and savored it.

“I have not heard that bell in a long time,” I told my nephew. “It rang all the time when I was your age.”

Every hour, on the hour, to be exact. That’s how my friends and I kept time when we were kids, living out our childhoods on Shaw, Prescott and Kimball streets in the '70s and 80s. When the church bell rang five times in the afternoon, that’s when I knew it was time to head home for dinner.

Dana Peterson, a parishioner at the church, provided some history about the bell in a recent email.

According to Dana, the North Parish Church had the first church bell in Sanford. The parish mounted a “small” bell in the steeple of the church in 1831, and it served a couple of purposes: to call people to worship on Sundays, of course, but also to act as an alarm in the event of a fire or other important developments. In time, this small bell proved too quiet and was replaced by a 900-pound one.

“It was this bell that rang out during the great fire of 1878,” Dana noted.

The church burned down in that fire, by the way. A new North Parish Church was built and dedicated in late 1879, and the bell installed atop it weighed 1,500 pounds. The church’s clock also was installed at this time.

That 900-pound ringer may still live on, however, Dana said.

“It’s possible that that beloved bell was not completely silenced and is still in the DNA of the one which hangs there today,” Dana said. “There are anecdotal stories that the remains of the 900-pound bell were salvaged from the ashes and melted down to become part of the new 1,500-pound bell.”

The bigger bell was donated by Mrs. Stone, on the condition that the new North Parish Church be rebuilt debt-free, which it was, according to Dana.

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Dana said the need for a church bell and ringer to warn of fire ended when the first electric pull-box alarm system was installed in Sanford in 1894. That system comprised of 13 signal boxes in downtown Sanford.

“The remnants of one of those signal boxes stood in front of the church until 2020, when it was removed during infrastructure replacement and repaving of Main Street,” Dana said.

Credit goes to David Yuill for keeping the clock and bell running for so many years in recent times. According to Dana, Mr. Yuill serviced and repaired the clock to the best of his ability and kept it running for as long as it did.

Name me among the grateful. I have many memories of growing up downtown, and most of them are images and anecdotes. As for the sounds of my childhood, the bell at North Parish Congregational Church ranks high among my most beloved.

A downtown needs a church bell. There’s something about a ringing church bell that contributes significantly to a downtown’s personality and character. A loud, functioning church bell brings people together. It connects us, as we all hear it at the same time, no matter what we are doing when within earshot.

City officials, business owners and volunteers have worked hard for years now to revitalize downtown Sanford. In terms of beautification, you can see the progress in pockets: the clock in front of City Hall; the staircase at the Mid-Town Mall; Gateway Park, with its illuminated falls.

Thanks to those committed to revitalization, these efforts will continue, and one day we will be able to see how it all connects into a flowing, beautified whole. It takes time, perseverance and patience.

The restoration of the North Parish Congregational Church’s clock and bell feels like another positive step forward toward that goal. It feels like a part of the bigger picture. For the longest time, the church’s stopped clock and silent bell felt like an example, even a symbol, of how downtown Sanford is currently not as vibrant and active like we remember it being back in the day, when people seemed more out and about, and mom-and-pop stores lined Main Street and shoppers filled them.

When we see some of the progress that has been made downtown, and we consider that $25 million in federal funds is headed our way to improve infrastructure, the newly restored and ringing North Parish bell and its clock have become a new symbol.

One that Sanford’s time is coming.

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and is a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Downtowns need a ringing church bell - Sanford now has one, once again