Does Your Church Have A Squint?

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The Church of Our Lady of Mt Carmel and Saints Peter & Paul at Mullewa in Western Australia does. A squint is a narrow aperture which allows the bell-ringer in a church to keep an eye on the priest as he is saying Mass. The bell-ringer stays in a small room which is separate from the body of the church. The squint at Mullewa was about 750mm deep and difficult to photograph. What looks like two people in the background are actually small statues. Two candlesticks are also visible. In the photo of the altar, the statues are on the right (as you view it) of the tabernacle (coloured green). When the priest offers up the host (bread) to God, he raises it upwards and at that precise moment, the bell-ringer would toll the bell. The only bell I've ever heard in such a situation has been a small hand-bell. The campanile or bell-tower at Our Lady of Mt Carmel accommodates six bells. Big John, the largest, can be heard all over town. The Church is heritage listed. An architect-priest, Monsignor Hawes, who I recently wrote about, designed the church and built it almost single-handed with occasional help from parishioners both black and white. Work commenced in 1920 and was completed seven years later. Hawes produced a prodigious amount of work during his lifetime, designing and building churches, convents, hermitages and other religious structures in England, Australia and the Bahamas. I thought the squint was a very clever piece of designing.