The question over whether there was once a large bell hanging somewhere on the West Heath estate remains unanswered.

We appealed for memories after Laurence Corper contacted WHOGA and said he inherited a bell that his father told him came from West Heath. The bell, dated 1859, was bought from a local salvage yard and is said to have originally belonged to the Ashgrove manor house that later became the school after it moved down from London.

The appeal did generate one response from Lucy Abel (Tomkins) who remembers there was a school bell, but not necessarily this one. She said: “I do remember a school bell, but it was not this large.

“This was particularly relevant for me because I was dared to call the school to a fire practice but by the late 1950s this was done with a games whistle kept in the school cloakroom because this had a more penetrating noise than the school bell.”

As reported previously, it is possible that a bell existed at Ashgrove House before it became West Heath, as large estate bells were once commonly used to alert staff to the start and end of the working day before people owned watches.

One theory is that it may have hung in what later became the Castle clock tower, but there is no evidence to support this.

For now, the question remains. ‘Does anyone else remember a bell at West Heath?’