Tony Merry was hoisted 3ft off the belfry floor when the rope caught his trousers. Stuck fast in the cramped upper reaches of St Mary's Church in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, he had to be rescued by firefighters and paramedics. They used a pulley to lower him through a trap door 15ft above ground and down on to a stretcher below.
Recovering at home yesterday, Mr Berry, 58, said: "Nothing like this has ever happened before – it gave me a real shock. I think a bunch of keys got caught in the rope and I was pulled about 3ft off the floor. The shock made me black out and I lost consciousness and fell to the ground and bashed my shoulder. The paramedics gave me morphine to help with the pain and then I was conscious throughout the rescue."
Mr Merry, a chemistry research fellow at Manchester University, lives in Charlbury and has been a bell ringer at St Mary's for three years. He added: "The belfry is up a narrow wooden spiral staircase and there was no way they could lower me down that, so they had to use a trap-door in the floor.
"We all know about the trap-door because some of our ringers are quite elderly and it has been pointed out as a possible escape route if someone has a heart attack, but I never imagined that I would be coming through it myself."
The alarm was raised by other campanologists. "I was standing by him at the time," said Mike Summers, the churchwarden. "It was not his fault. The rope just caught him and tripped him up, lifting him off the ground, and he fell heavily. You have to be vigilant when bell ringing because accidents can happen".
Photo from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment