According to the enduring local legend, Lupton was so grateful for the sound of the bells that he instituted a land trust that would pay for the bells to be rung for 15 minutes, five times daily at 4am, 6am, noon, 4pm and finally at 8pm.

The land trust in question was related to a plot of land between nearby Wardington and Chacombe, understood by some to be where Rev. Lupton was when he heard the sound of the bells.

The piece of land in question was thereafter known as ‘Bell Land’, and was marked as such on maps until at least 1938.

The tradition of daily bell-ringing continued for many hundreds of years. By 1876, the five ringings had been reduced to three, at 5am, noon and 8pm. By 1937, the Banbury Guardian reports that the number of ringings had increased to four, but the first was at the slightly less antisocial hour of 6am rather than 4 or 5am!

In 1937, the parish was faced with a conundrum. For three generation spanning over 100 years, the responsibility for ringing the bells had rested with a single family. Mr Louis Lambert, who had followed his grandfather and father in the role, was finally retiring at age 70. Lambert had no offspring to follow in his footsteps and take over the position, and the role was proving hard to fill. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the early starts and late finishes required by the role. Mr Lambert himself admitted that the need to be in the village to ring the bell every day had been a bind, preventing him from taking holidays or even a day a trip to Birmingham to visit his relatives!

By 1971, the tradition had all but died out, with the bells being rung just three times a week in the evenings.

What truth is there in the story of the lost Rev. Lupton being guided home by the sound of the bells? It’s hard to say. It is a fact that Rev. Lupton started a land trust to pay for the ringing of the bells in 1512. There are parchment records in the church archives dated 26th August 1512 that lay out the details of when the bells should be rung and how the person employed to ring them should be paid.

However, there is no contemporary written record that mentions Rev. Lupton’s actions being inspired by his having becoming lost and saved by the ringing of the bells. Although a charming story, it’s entirely possible that this story was made up after the fact to explain Rev. Lupton’s motivation.

That said, it is very easy to imagine someone becoming lost in the low-lying, prone to flooding, land to the east of Cropredy, particularly in the years before the Enclosure Acts when there would have been considerably less landmarks to navigate by!