Every time I write something about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, I am impressed by the scale of the response. Yesterday, it was all over the twittersphere: a sense of pain and anguish that we have somehow allowed a working Foundry, which has been in continuous existence for over four hundred years and produced the bells of Big Ben, to be closed down and sold to a New York venture capitalist to be butchered as a boutique hotel. But worse than this, it has been done with the consent and co-operation of the authorities: Historic England, who believe that it is better to co-operate with the destroyers, rather than, as is their moral and statutory duty, resist them.

I hope that now at least there is a possibility that local democracy will come into play and Tower Hamlets will do what it can to reinstate the Foundry by supporting the detailed plans which have been drawn up by the United Kingdom Historic Building Preservation Trust, following the model of what they have done at Middleport Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent.

Do please sign the petition if you’re eligible.