By Paul H. Vickers, Friends of the Aldershot Military Museum
Outside Wellington House, adjacent to the main entrance, stands a large bell suspended from a purpose-built wooden canopy. This is the Sebastopol Bell, which dates back to the origins of Aldershot Camp during the Crimean War.
On 8 December 1855 the transport ship “Bucephalus” docked at Woolwich, laden with trophies brought back to Britain from the final victories in the Crimea. Once unloaded, the trophies were laid out in Dial Square, Woolwich Arsenal, where they were inspected by Queen Victoria on 19 February 1856. The majority of the items were military spoils, guns and mortars, which were of little interest to Her Majesty, but her attention was drawn by two large bells taken from the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Sebastopol. Each bell weighed 17 hundredweight 1 quarter 21 pounds (approximately 887 kilos) and were cast by Nicolas Samtoun of Moscow.
The Queen directed that Dial Square should be opened for a few weeks for the public to see the trophies and also desired that after the public display one of the bells should be taken to Windsor Castle. It was initially placed on the North Terrace, before being moved to the Round Tower where it still hangs. The bell is struck only to mark the death of a king or queen, and was rung on 9 September 2022, the day after the death of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Starting at noon, it was tolled 96 times, once for each year of her life. It was also sounded as the Queen’s funeral procession entered Windsor Castle. Until the death of the Queen the bell had not been heard for 20 years, having last been rung for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002.
Queen Victoria had also ordered that the second bell was to be taken to Aldershot, newly established as the first permanent training camp for the British Army. It arrived in the Camp on 23 June 1856 and was hung was hung in a purpose-built wooden canopy on the ridge of Stannon Hill, at the junction of the present day Gun Hill and Hospital Road, one of the highest points in the Camp. The location was next to the “Time Gun”, a large cannon which was fired each day at 1 o’clock in the afternoon as a time check, and again at 9.30 in the evening as a signal for troops to return to their quarters. Between firings a sentry struck the hours on the Sebastopol Bell.
Owing to the location of Stannon Hill, overlooking the Camp to both north and south, it was here that the original headquarters huts were built. The canopy with the bell was raised, and next to it was erected a semaphore signal. The constant ringing of the bell seems to have taken its toll, for in 1876 it was sent to Woolwich for refurbishment. On its return to Aldershot it was hung back in its original position at the top of Gun Hill, where it was reported to sound “almost as well as ever”.
These arrangements continued until the Cambridge Military Hospital was built in 1879, when the Sebastopol Bell was taken from its canopy and re-erected in the hospital clock tower. The Bell continued to ring the hours, but was now controlled by the clock mechanism, with the quarter hours rung on two newly cast smaller bells. The bells fell silent in 1914 when the ringing was stopped as it was thought to be disturbing the hospital patients.
The Sebastopol Bell remained in the clock tower, neither seen nor heard, until Major-General Ronald Bramwell-Davis, General Officer Commanding of Aldershot District 1957 - 1960, instructed that it should be removed from the tower and given a more suitable position where it could be seen and appreciated. In March 1961 the Bell was taken down by a party of Royal Engineers and re-hung in a newly made wooden canopy outside the District Headquarters building in Steele’s Road. Although he had retired in 1960, General Bramwell-Davis was invited to perform the ceremonial unveiling, which took place on 28 April 1961 and the Bell was struck at 12 noon.
It remained outside the Headquarters building until 1978 when it was moved to a position by the entrance to the Aldershot Garrison Officers’ Mess, built in the 1960s on Hospital Road between Gun Hill and Middle Hill. In 1991 the Garrison Officers’ Mess moved across to Gun Hill House, which had been the officers’ mess for Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC). Gun Hill House was too small to accommodate all the nursing officers, so for some years the overflow had been quartered in the Garrison Mess which had surplus rooms. Hence the logical decision was taken for the Garrison and QARANC messes to change places. Following the move, on 1 November 1991 the Sebastopol Bell and its canopy were moved into the north-west corner of the grounds of Gun Hill House, close to its original location from the Victorian times. Following the closure of the Cambridge Hospital in 1996 a separate mess for QARANC officers was no longer needed and the Garrison Mess returned to its previous building. A few years later the Bell followed and returned to its previous location by the mess entrance. In 2005 both the Bell and its canopy were given a much needed clean and restoration.
The redevelopment of Aldershot under Project Allenby Connaught meant that the land around Hospital Road, including the Officers’ Mess building, was to be alienated for civilian development. It was important that the Sebastopol Bell was kept within the area retained by the garrison, so in 2007 the Bell was moved again. Once more it was to be located outside Garrison Headquarters, which was now in Wellington House at St Omer Barracks, the first building to be handed over under Project Allenby Connaught.
Now in an appropriate and prominent position within the garrison, the Sebastopol Bell remains an important symbol of Aldershot’s military heritage. It is one of very few items remaining from the early years of the Camp and provides an unbroken link to the garrison’s origins in the 1850s.
Credits
Article originally published in the The Garrison, Spring 2024
Copyright © Paul H. Vickers. This article, including the accompanying pictures, may not be reproduced or republished, in whole or in part, either in print or electronically, including on any websites or social media sites, without the prior permission of the author.