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The Wilnars worked at Oad Street, where in 1959 what is believed to be their casting pit was discovered by Mr. Eddie Barton. He was ploughing Boundary Field, which is on Woodgate Farm to the west of Munsgore and north of Woodgate Farm House. He came to a slight hollow which made him think of the story he had been told as a boy by a very old man. The story went that the devil in a fit of anger had thrown a bell from Milton church tower and it had fallen to the earth in Boundary Field, making a hole. As Eddie Barton ploughed, he found that the soil in the hollow was of a different colour from that of the rest of the field. He discovered pieces of iron conglomerate which he took to Maidstone Museum. They now have no record of this, but the site was recorded at the time by the ordnance survey. There was a well nearby, which Mr Barton covered or capped, and a bank of pure sand. In the Wilnars' time there would also have been plenty of timber.

The first bell definitely known to be the work of one of the Wilnars was dated 1618 and was made for Graveney church. John Wilnar was an excellent craftsman and his bells were finely cast and well-proportioned and so had a good tone. The lettering on the bells was ‘John Wilnar Made me,’ together with the date. The lettering was in Roman capitals formed by placing cut-out parchment letters into the mould.

Due to the state of the roads and the difficulty of transporting large objects at this period, many of the bells would have been cast in the parish which had ordered them. Newchurch on Romney Marsh was one of these and parts of bell moulds and deposit of bell metal were discovered in the churchyard some years ago; John Wilnar made four bells for that parish. The tenor bell that he made for Cowden was another which was not cast at Borden. The indenture or agreement signed by John Wilnar in 1635 at Cowden still exists. It shows that he was paid £6 for the bell and that he guaranteed its quality for a year:- ‘hath warrented ye said bell to continue tunable and unbroken by ye space of one whole year. If therefore ye said bell shall continue and be a good and tunable bell according to musicall harmony..’

In fact the bell is still in use at Cowden. The indenture shows that it was not cast there but at Ightham in 1620 in ‘Ye furnace or casting place.’ Ightham is at some distance from Cowden. It does not appear to be an obvious location. It could have been the nearest place where he had an old furnace-pit that he could re-activate. Perhaps the bell was transported on the River Eden to Cowden?

Records show that a John Wilnar was born at Ightham in 1594, son of John Wilnar. He would have been the correct age to be starting up in business on his own by 1618. Wilnar is a rare surname and, as far as can be ascertained, there are no other Wilnar baptisms in Kent at this period. We may assume that John was born at Ightham. It could be that he was also trained there by Stephen Swan. Swan had made bells for many parishes between 1609 and 1614 including Challock, Darenth and West Peckham. My search of the Ightham parish register has revealed the marriage of a Stephen Swan there in 1613 and so everything points to the Wilnars growing up in Ightham and being trained in their craft by their neighbour Swan.

John Wilnar was buried at Borden in May, 1640, thereafter Henry Wilnar, probably his brother, carried on the business. His workmanship was equally good and in the year of his death, 1644, he was paid £32 for casting five bells for St. Mary the Virgin, in Sandwich. Only four of his bells now survive; at Eastry and Challock in Kent and Berwick and Pett in Sussex. So bell founding ceased in Borden in 1644 when Henry joined his brother at rest in Borden churchyard, and after ‘the Widdow Wilnor’ was buried in 1649, no further members of the family appear in the registers.  

Sixty-one of John Wilnar's bells survive, six in Sussex, three in Essex, one in Surrey, and the remainder in Kent, widely scattered from neighbouring Bredgar and Milton clock towers, to Ivychurch in the south and Addington in the west.