1861
Two bells cast in France
The parish's twin bells were cast in France in 1861, the gift of a benefactor named Casimir Grégoire — the bell in the tower still bears his name in its bronze. Packed in crates, they came by sea to Madras and up through Tirunelveli, and were finally hung in 1872, one in each of the church's two new towers, their joined ringing giving, the people still say, a sweetness of sound heard nowhere else in this land.
Parish traditionThis moment rests on 4 sources.
What this source establishes
The one externally checkable thing about the bells: the bronze itself. The Knowledge Base long recorded that the inscriptions "have never been photographed", which left the whole story — Lyon, Burdin, the donor — resting on a single Tamil web page that the parish's own souvenir contradicts on the donor's name. A photograph now exists, and the object settles what the paper could not: the donor is named on the bell he gave.