Carefully stripping away small sections of paint at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, the muralist Margot Datz was looking for guidance for her next design.

When artist Margot Datz begins a new project she finds it hard to stop. “Until someone rips me off the wall I’m there,” she said on Wednesday morning at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. Although no one is coming to rip Ms. Datz off the wall, her brother Stephen Datz is on hand to “help her out the door,” he said. Good thing, too, as this weekend there will be a wedding held at the church. Scaffolding and bridal gowns do not really mix. But magnificently-restored murals serving as a backdrop for wedded bliss definitely do.

Since 1843, the Old Whaling Church, with its familiar white exterior, six grand columns and regal clock tower, has stood watch over Edgartown’s Main street.

But inside the Greek revival church, built during the town’s whaling heyday, was another feature that architect Frederick Baylies viewed as an integral part of the completed project: trompe l’oeil paintings graced the walls and the ceilings, and the church’s interior architecture was built with these sweeping features in mind.

It took a gentle push and a firm pull of many hands to get the 1,590-pound bronze bell back into position. But last Friday, after months of work and preparation, the Old Whaling Church bell was again in its place high above downtown Edgartown.

On Monday the 1,590-pound church bell that has rung the hour for Edgartonians for five generations was temporarily relieved of duty. The bronze bell, cast in 1843 and installed in the Edgartown Whaling Church in 1889, was gingerly removed from atop the clock tower by crane, for the first time, on the coldest day this winter.