I am going to answer my own question as to why it is that Historic England has supported the plans to redevelop the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a boutique hotel:-

1. They were consulted at an early stage by Raycliff. I guess that the advice they gave was followed. Raycliff have employed good and experienced local architects. So, the fact that Raycliff followed the correct procedures will have encouraged Historic England to support Raycliff’s application.

2. Historic England were not duty bound to examine, let alone support, the alternative proposal put forward by United Kingdom Historic Building Preservation Trust. This is in spite of Historic England having themselves supported the previous project run by UKHBPT at Middleport Pottery which won a Europa Nostra award for heritage.

3. The Hughes family who previously ran the Bell Foundry for several generations believe that it is uneconomic to run a Bell Foundry in Whitechapel. If they couldn’t, how will anyone else ? But Factum Foundation have a workable and sustainable business plan for making bells alongside running a Foundry for artists. So, the idea that the Foundry is uneconomic in its current form is not proven.

4. Some people in the heritage community, possibly including Historic England, think that, once the equipment of the Bell Foundry was sold, its previous life had essentially ended. But I have been to the Bell Foundry since it closed. It retains all of its character and atmosphere. Nothing has changed. Once it became a Bell Foundry again, it would spring back to life. But not if it is a cafeteria.

5. At heart, this is an argument between the heritage as viewed through its built fabric and what is now known as ‘the intangible heritage’ – the heritage as considered more broadly, to include issues of memory, the survival of what are essentially medieval forms of craft practice, transmitted through generations. Historic England may have felt that, as a legal entity, it exists only to preserve the former. And since the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was not designed by William Chambers or Robert Adam, its existence can be sacrificed.

As the dust settles on the decision by the Secretary of State to delay any decision on planning consent for the re-development of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, it has become clear that there are two potential pitfalls:-

1. In a week’s time, there will be a new Secretary of State. Robert Jenrick has proved himself to be unexpectedly and efficiently supportive of at least delaying the decision. Will the next Secretary of State be equally well disposed towards the heritage ?

2. The statutory agency which has responsibility for protecting the heritage is none other than Historic England. We know their view. They think the plan to turn the Foundry into a hotel is ‘creative, sensitive, and respectful of the historic buildings’, as their Chief Executive, Duncan Wilson, wrote in a letter to the Times on 15 July 2019. So, we need somehow to encourage Historic England to change their view and recognise that it may not be in their public interest to be seen to be accessory to the destruction of one of the supreme pieces of British industrial archaeology. So, the question is, how do we get them to change their view ?

All those of you who have dipped your pens in vitriol or are, even now, planning to do so, in all corners of the globe. Good sense has prevailed: the Secretary of State has realised that the decision to redevelop the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is too contentious to be left to Tower Hamlets planning committee on its own and has therefore issued a direction to the relevant planning officer instructing her ‘to enable him to consider whether he should direct under Section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that the applications should be referred to him for determination’. So, as I understand it, he hasn’t yet called it in for adjudication: merely indicated that a new Minister may, and I hope will, want to call it in for close scrutiny on grounds of its national importance, rather than allowing its development to be passed by the casting vote of the chairman of the planning committee, when the committee itself was divided in its verdict. So, the battle is far from won. In fact, it’s only just commenced. But there is a chink of hope entering into the discussion.

On second thoughts, do please still write, making the case for the importance of the Foundry. But temper what you say in the knowledge that the Minister may be minded to recognise the importance of the Foundry’s long and unique history above the case for its redevelopment and so, please focus on what the benefits of keeping its historic use as a Foundry, instead of bastardising it as a cafe, will be.

For those of you who are minded to write to the Secretary of State for Planning, Communities and Local Government about the recent decision by Tower Hamlets to grant planning permission for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to be turned into a boutique hotel, I have received some good and sensible advice about whether or not this will, or can, happen. Essentially, the Secretary of State will only over-ride the machinery of local government if he/she feels that this is an issue of more than local concern.

So, in writing, please stress the national and international importance of the Bell Foundry, its uniqueness not just to Whitechapel, but to the world, and that the decision will remain forever contentious, a blot on the escutcheon of whichever party wins power in the election next week.

Campanologists and historians in Philadelphia, Toronto, Vancouver and New Zealand, please write. It is your history as well as ours which is being destroyed:-

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2019/12/01/a-letter-to-the-secretary-of-state/

I have now written to the Secretary of State as follows:-

Dear Secretary of State,

WHITECHAPEL BELL FOUNDRY

I am writing, as others are, to encourage you to call in the decision recently made by Tower Hamlets planning committee on the redevelopment of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for review.

As you will probably be aware, this is an issue which has stirred deep passions both locally and internationally, because the Bell Foundry was the oldest company extant in Great Britain, still working in its eighteenth-century premises, which had been miraculously well-preserved and demonstrated what were essentially pre-industrial working practices.   Visiting it was quite unlike anything else I have experienced either in this country or abroad.

Historic England have argued that the architectural fabric will be preserved when it is turned into an upmarket, boutique hotel.   This is substantially true, apart from the demolition of the later rear section of the Foundry.   But the atmosphere, the history, the inherited skills, the sense of generation after generation inhabiting the same environment to cast Big Ben and the Liberty Bell:  these will be irreparably damaged and lost forever.

I very much hope that you will issue a holding direction so that the decision by Tower Hamlets planning committee, which was itself split and relied on the casting vote of its chairman, can be reviewed at the highest level.

Charles Saumarez Smith

I realise that Rowan Moore’s excellent article about the Millennium Dome may be the first of many attempts to recover the circumstances which led to such a spectacular fiasco on its opening night and a generally disappointing and unmemorable experience for those who visited it.

There is one aspect of it which has maybe been completely forgotten, which was that, since the lottery had been established in 1993, Kenneth Baker had been making the case for the establishment of a Museum of British History to teach schoolchildren about the past through artefacts and experiential displays. I was part of a small working group which met regularly in offices in Manchester Square and I remember suggesting, and discussing, whether or not it could be in docklands. But, strangely, doclklands was regarded as too far from the centre in those days.

I sometimes wonder, as I did at the time, what would have happened if the two projects had joined up and the dome had become an exploration of British history and identity, instead of, as it turned out, a grand projet, without any galvanising and controlling idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/01/millennium-dome-20-years-on-new-labour?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress

Before it fades from the memory, I want to remind myself of the deep pleasure of seeing the brilliant and beautiful – brilliant in every way – production of Death in Venice, which we saw last night at Covent Garden. For my generation, Visconti’s 1971 film, set to music from Mahler’s third and fifth symphony, was one of the most powerful and, I now realise, pioneering depictions of the love and admiration of a much older man for a young and handsome adolescent – homerotic, of course, but unconsummated. Mark Padmore’s depiction of Gustav von Aschenbach’s love (or is it lust ?) is much more restrained than I remember the film being, but just as powerful, as the plague comes to Venice and he stays on, only for the hope of seeing Tadzio and the occasional glance in his direction: a masterly and wholly admirable performance, helped by the beauty of Tadzio’s dancing.

Following the decision by the Tower Hamlets Planning Committee to grant planning permission for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to be turned into a boutique hotel, strenuous efforts are being made for the decision to be reviewed by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, which can be done in exceptional circumstances, as we believe this to be. I hope you will consider writing, as suggested by the Gentle Author (see below). It is the last possible chance of saving and restoring the Chatsworth of industrial archaeology:-

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2019/12/01/a-letter-to-the-secretary-of-state/