St Leonard's Tower

In the middle of our town stands the clock tower:

Except that it's not really a clock tower, it's the remnant of a medieval church. You can see in the picture below where the body of the church would have come out from the tower:

Well, as luck would have it, Ethan and I were shopping for Rosie's birthday after his orthodontist visit (braces go on next week, hurrah!) and the tower was open for visitors; in all my years here I've never seen it open before! We popped into the tower and were greeted by four rather lovely and elderly gentlemen, who proceeded to hide our shopping bags in a bench seat they were sitting on so that we could go climb the three floors to see the six bells at the top. Who knew there were so many bells up there? Here's the chunky front door:

And the key that fits it!:

The younger looking gentleman of the group took us on a quick tour of the rather tiny tower, telling us lots of interesting facts as we went. This is the start of the stairwell:

And Ethan going up it.  Yes, it's that small:

Here's the view of the stairs from the first floor!:

The clock face from inside the tower on the second floor:

After a climb to the third floor via a ladder, we were able to see the bells:

One of them sounded the quarter hour while we were there, and it was rather loud!

The walk back down was a little trickier, it is very steep and the steps are tiny. We learnt that the stairs go up clockwise because if the church was attacked from below, your left hand holds on to the centre of the wall leaving your right hand free to fight with your sword.  Anyone coming up the stairs would find it difficult to swing their sword!

It was also proved that Medieval people were much shorter than me and had smaller feet!: