I am learning from the amazing amount of traffic on my twitter account how much the Whitechapel Bell Foundry means to people: not just as a set of historic buildings, but because it represents such a strong sense of historic continuity, which has now been ruptured. Much the most popular tweet came from someone who goes under the soubriquet of Boiled beans (@Fulmedames) and I reproduce it here as a record of some of the feelings which the closure of the Foundry has generated:-
Those bells spoke to the people in a time when there was no other way to reach so many at once. They tolled the time, peeled the weddings, told who had died, sent out warnings, opened & closed markets.
Now we silence the makers for profit.
How right you are. Just as the Church was the architectural and social centre of town and village life, their bells were at the centre of local communications. How EH fails to understand that is extraordinary. Their Board ought to be ashamed, and should consider their positions.