WHEN I was recently in the vicinity of St Mary’s Church, Wallingford at 9pm one evening, I was delighted to hear not only a bell striking nine for the hour, but also another, slightly higher tone – the town’s ‘curfew bell’.

This ancient tradition had ceased for some time while the tower was being renovated, but it is now happily restored once more.

For this task only two of the ten bells hanging in the tower are used.

They are sounded by a mechanism, set to cause the No 10 bell to be struck for the hour, and the No 5 bell to sound the curfew.

‘But what,’ you may well ask, ‘is the significance of all this?’

Tradition takes us back to three years after William the Conqueror had come to Wallingford in 1066 to negotiate the hand-over of the kingdom with Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and crossed the Thames here with his army.

In 1069, William imposed a ‘curfew‘ on the kingdom of 8pm – the time at which all fires should be covered over with protecting lid, a practical device to prevent fires breaking out in the largely timber-framed houses of the time, together with a way of imposing an order that all people should be safely in their homes by a certain time.

It is the latter meaning which is better known today, particularly for young offenders or in war-torn countries.

The word ‘curfew’ comes from the medieval French ‘couvre feu’ – literally ‘cover the fire’ because French was the language of the conquering Normans.

Large clay covers were used, small pieces of which have been found in several of our Wallingford excavations, usually well blackened and sometimes simply decorated.

Wallingford’s traditional time of curfew, however, was an hour later than in other places – 9pm instead of 8pm – and it has been maintained for centuries that this was because William was grateful to the people of Wallingford for their support in 1066.

Perhaps not surprisingly, no actual documentary proof of this has yet come to light, but historians have long accepted the ancient curfew bell custom in the town.

John Kirby Hedges, wrote in 1881: "At this place the curfew tolls the knell of parting day at nine o’clock, and at six o’clock every morning the bell is again brought into requisition, as a signal to the inhabitants to rise, and let us hope that no action on the part of the authorities will deprive the town of so useful a custom, which probably originated with the Conqueror in this very burgh."

In Hedges’ time the evening and morning bells would have been rung with human effort, but today mechanisation takes the strain.

The 6am bell has long since been silenced, but next time you hear the curfew bell, spare a thought to the many thousands of people throughout Wallingford’s history who lived their lives to the sound of such bells.