When Robert Coats needed a hobby to keep him sane during his retirement years, he was saved by the bells.

About 70 years ago, the eclectic Johnston County man took up the unusual hobby of collecting bells — not small, lightweight handbells, but large, unwieldy bells, some as high as 3 feet tall and weighing far more than a man could lift. His bells didn’t jingle or tinkle — they clanged loudly, deeply, and resonated throughout the McGee’s Crossroads community that he and his wife, Addie, called home.

Though Coats died in 1972, his collection lives on in the form of a tall, scaffolding-like tower of iron and concrete that displays more than 30 of his prized bells. The 32-foot-tall monstrosity stands on the old Coats homeplace — less than 10 miles east of Angier — which Coats and his wife bequeathed to the community. A small country museum sits nearby, housing Addie’s 1953 Cadillac and a variety of old-timey odds and ends that the couple collected — things that you’d likely find in your grandmother’s attic. But it’s the bells that Coats loved best.

“Once he started collecting the bells, it just got in his blood,” says his great-nephew, Timmy Penny, who lives near the tower. “Train bells, school bells, church bells — all kinds of bells.”

Addie & Robert Coats Photography courtesy of Johnston County Heritage Center, Coats Country Museum Photograph Collection, PHC 172

Coats’s interest in bells can be traced to his childhood growing up on a farm in Johnston County, says Joan Jones. She’s a former trustee and historian for the Coats Estate, which encompasses the museum, bell tower, and house. “Farms always had a bell to communicate from neighbor to neighbor, or to communicate to the workers out in the fields,” Jones says. “He was always interested in that history, so he started collecting bells.”

Coats acquired his first bell in the mid-1950s, and the hobby grew from there as he scoured North Carolina for more. He bought some bells, begged for others, and salvaged a few from junkyards. Most were made of iron, though some were bronze or brass.

It was in the ’60s when Coats erected the tower to display his bells publicly — no easy feat, considering the largest bell is 44 inches across and weighs more than half a ton. Coats used a crane to hoist the heaviest bells so a welder could mount them onto the tower’s metal crossbeams. “Some of them are astronomically heavy,” Penny says.

No handbells here: The 32 bells that compose Robert Coats’s iron-and-concrete bell tower are sizable — a crane was used to set the heaviest ones into place. photograph by Charles Harris

In time, the bells became a focal point in the community. Traditionally, they were rung on special occasions: Sunday mornings, Easter Sunday afternoon, the Fourth of July, and at sunset on New Year’s Eve (ringing them at midnight would’ve kept a lot of children from being able to enjoy the celebration).

When Penny was a boy, his great-uncle paid him to ring one of the bells every Sunday morning. “I got a dollar a year,” he says with a chuckle.

One local couple loved the bells so much that they held their wedding reception at the Coats homeplace so that the bells could chime in celebration. When all the bells are rung at once, the result is part cacophony and part concert. “If you’re right under it, it’s deafening,” Addie once told a reporter. “But if you’re a ways off, it’s pretty.”

As times and traditions have changed, the bells are not rung as often as they used to be. Still, for visitors who want to see — and hear — them, the tower stands right where it’s stood for more than half a century. The bells may be a bit rusty now, but they’re still ringing.

Coats Bell Tower and Museum
3317 Old Fairground Road
Angier, NC 27501