Four bellringers arrived in the tower room at The Parish Church of St Cuthbert just after 11.30am on Friday getting ready to take turns in tolling a muffled bell in memory of HM The Queen for an hour.

Just before noon the bellringers including Simon, Susan and Chris put a lot of effort in to swing the bell so that it was upright, or upside down. They then rang it through 360 degrees as slowly as they could.

Two of the group had to go up a small, steep ladder into the bell tower putting a leather muffle on the metal clapper. This makes one note sounds quite loudly and the second is more like a muffled echo. They aimed to ring the bell for an hour until 1pm.

There are ten bells in the tower and on Sunday for the morning service these will all be rung, again half muffled.

There was a countdown to noon and around 4 seconds before the hour Susan began to ring the slow half muffled bells which rang out to Princes Street.

HM THe Queen died on 8 September 2022 and Edinburgh is getting ready for major public events in the next few days PHOTO ©2022 The Edinburgh Reporter
HM THe QUeen died on 8 September 2022 and Edinburgh is getting ready for major public events in the next few days This photo was taken from the roof of SThe Parish Church of St Cuthbert PHOTO ©2022 The Edinburgh Reporter
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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.