The Ditchley Congress Bells turn 40: a celebration of the transatlantic community

Ditchley family and friends gathered at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in in Washington, D.C. on a sunny September day for a celebration organised by The Ditchley Foundation and The American Ditchley Foundation to commemorate 40 years of the historic Ditchley Bells ringing out from the Old Post Office Tower for liberty with wisdom, courage and love.

Right at the heart of United States’ government and history, visitors can enjoy a view from the Old Post Office Tower’s 270-foot observation deck that overlooks several of the United States’ most prized structures: the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon, the Smithsonian museums, the Supreme Court, and the Lincoln Memorial.

The Ditchley Bells, a faithful copy of the ten bells of Westminster Abbey, were a gift to the American people from Ditchley and its founder Sir David Wills to mark the bicentenary of independence in 1776 and to symbolise the transatlantic community. They were hung in the Old Post Office Tower and dedicated in a ceremony led by then Vice President George H. Bush in 1983.

The tenor bell bears David Wills' personal message of gratitude to the American people of wisdom, courage and love, qualities to which we might all aspire. Adding resonance, the bells were cast in the ancient Whitechapel Bell Foundry, source of Philadelphia's Liberty bell, inscribed, ‘Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof’.