Nottingham bell's rogue ringing wakes residents

A fault on a city's bell has caused it to chime late into the night, with many reporting disrupted sleep.

The 10-tonne Little John in Nottingham's Council House has the deepest ring in the UK and can be heard up to seven miles away.

It normally stops at 22:30, but a heating failure in the clock tower caused the silencing mechanism to stick.

One resident said it was "giving many people a very bad night's sleep".

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The bell was heard ringing early on Monday and Tuesday.

Daemyn Taylor tweeted BBC Radio Nottingham to say he had heard it at 03:30 GMT and Jack Isaacs thought he had heard it doing 13 bongs at 01:00.

"I was just getting ready to go to bed, and I had the kitchen window just a little open, and all of a sudden I heard the bell ringing," said 28-year-old Mr Isaacs.

"It was so confused by it and even more confused because it rang 13 times."

It has been claimed the bell has a "far better" tone than Big Ben

Mr Isaacs said he cannot normally hear the ringing from his house in Beeston, which is five miles away from the council house.

"But at that time of night there's hardly any other noise," he added. "My mum thought I was going mad when I told her. I was so baffled by it."

A Nottingham City Council spokesman said they believed engineers had fixed the problem, but at midnight on Tuesday, the chimes were heard to ring again nine times.

They have now been turned off completely while workers take another look.

It comes as the authority insisted the bell would not ring after 23:00 GMT on 31 January to mark Brexit.