The bells rang out from St Nicholas Church, Hurst to mark the 75th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the Second World War.
Covid restrictions meant only half of the church’s eight bells could be rung on Saturday, August 15.
Standing in the churchyard was villager, John Penney, for whom the Victory over Japan Day commemoration was particularly poignant.
“My uncle, Fred Browne of Norwich, who was in the Army, was in a prisoner of war camp in Singapore for probably nearly three years until the war ended,” he said.
“He never talked about his experience afterwards.
“The loin cloth he wore in the camp is exhibited at the National Memorial Arboretum [in Staffordshire].”
The Hurst church’s tenor bell was tolled for two minutes before two minutes’ silence at 11am.
The bellringers then rang rounds and call changes for 15 minutes, the limit allowed under covid guidelines.
Tower captain Graham Slade, who leads the ringers, said: “I felt very proud of our ringers turning out today to ring the bells at Hurst. The band is still relatively new, most having learnt to ring in the past two years.
“Of course, we were sad that we could only ring four of our eight bells today, due to the Covid restrictions, but glad to be able to mark the 75th anniversary of VJ Day.”
The ringers, Stephanie and Keith Milner, Duncan Kendall and Peter Needham wore masks for the bell ringing and left the door to the ringing chamber open onto the churchyard, as part of their Covid precautions.
Stephanie and Keith felt a special connection to the anniversary, having visited the Kasukuni war shrine in Tokyo when Keith was working in Japan.
Hurst residents who listened, standing near Hurst’s war memorial, applauded the ringers afterwards. Two men named on the memorial were prisoners of war in the Far East.
They were John Blandy and Ernest Rainey, both 32 when they died.
