THE poignant sound of bells will honour the memory of a young Ledbury bell-ringer who fell at Gallipoli, a century ago next Monday.

Private Walter Bradley, of Knoll View, Newtown, was killed in action on November 16, 1915, but he was well-remembered then and he is still remembered now, a century on.

Anne Toussaint, secretary of the Ledbury Bell Ringers said: "Almost a hundred years ago, The Ledbury Reporter and Farmers' Gazette reported that Mary and George Bradley of Knoll View, Newtown, Ledbury had received notification that their son, Private Walter Bradley had been killed in action, on November 16.

"Walter was born in 1897 and was one of seven children. He is listed as an apprentice plumber in the 1911 census, and later worked for the builders George Hill and Sons. He was a member of the Hereford Diocesan Guild of bell ringers. Walter enlisted in Ledbury with his brother in 1913 and was posted to the 1st/1st Battalion of the Herefordshire Regiment, he was killed in action on the Gallipoli Peninsula."

Private Bradley is commemorated at the Helles Memorial in Turkey and is also remembered in the Great War Memorial Book of Church Bell-Ringers.

Mrs Toussaint said: "This handwritten book records bell-ringers who fell in the Great War. It is on display in a bookcase on the way up to the ringing chamber at St Paul's Cathedral, London. It bears the following inscription: 'They whom this book commemorates were numbered among those, who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom'."

The bell ringers at St Michael and All Angels in Ledbury will commemorate the centenary of Private Walter Bradley's death with a quarter peal of Grandsire Triples in the early evening on Monday November 16. The ringing will last for about an hour in total.