Having spent the morning writing about the fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry which is due to be either closed or moved in May this year, I thought I should go and have a look at it, even though I knew it would be closed.   It’s always been said to be a building of 1738, owing to an entry in the company history, but recent research by the Survey of London has discovered that the lease on the so-called ‘Old Artichoke Alehouse’ was advertised in the Daily Advertiser on 31 August 1743 and it was only in 1747 that the site was described as ‘a new built messuage’.   It’s a remarkably well preserved piece of industrial architecture and good if it can be preserved as a working museum, as the SPAB apparently plan:-