A new, old bell has been donated to Tāhunanui School after their century-old bell was stolen in August last year, meaning students can now resume ringing the bell each day.
Ruby Powell-Jones, who was a Tāhunanui School student at the time the bell was stolen, but has since moved on to intermediate, felt so strongly that more could be done in the search for the missing bell that she contacted Fair Go.
Following the airing of the show in September, multiple people reached out to both Fair Go and principal Barbara Bowen, offering replacements.
“Who knew so many people had bells laying around in their shed,” Barbara says.
The first to contact Fair Go was Southward Car Museum in Paraparaumu.
Barbara happened to be heading up there for a holiday anyway so went to have a look at the bell.
“Mr Southward had passed away and they didn’t know why he had kept it or where it had come from, but he was a bit of a collector of everything, and they offered it to us.”
She says there were almost signs that the bell was meant for the school.
“When I went to look at it, it had engraved on the side of it ‘Bowen founder 1848’, Bowen obviously being my last name.”
Knowing a little about New Zealand history, she knew it was too old to have been made here so thinks it must’ve been bought out by early settlers.
When Barbara arrived back at school, she measured to see if the bell would fit – it would.
“When I was up there it looked really, really big so I measured it a lot of times.”
The museum then sent the bell to the school.
“There was a bit of engineering to get it to fit perfectly and to ensure it stays safe, but it’s up now, we had an unveiling and now it gets rung every day.”
Ruby was able to come along to the ceremony, along with a parent who is a fireman, and was able to share the history of the original bell with those in attendance.
“He told us how the yellow bell had come to be in the school in the first place and then the youngest and oldest child from the school and one of the staff members did the unveilling.
“The kids love it, they almost can’t walk past it without touching it.”
Barbara says it has encouraged more old traditions to be looked at including raising the flag up the mast each day.
And although the bell isn’t the original, it already holds a special place in the heart of those at the school.
“I think being on tv, the build-up, then the time delay all just added to it. Its really important that it’s going to mean something to the school,” Barbara says.
