The afternoon session consisted of Matthew Dale-Harris making the lead architect, Will Burges of 31/44 Architects, reveal that in the early stages of their plans, which went out to public consultation in June 2018, no effort whatever was being made at that stage to retain any element of a foundry. There was no effort to keep bell making as intrinsic to their design. They then identified a local Foundry to be inserted into the plans as a placebo, not because they believed in it, but in order to get planning permission, without adapting their plans in such a way as to ensure that real foundry work could take place.

This is radically different to the approach of Re-Form and Factum Foundation which have always been 100% committed to retaining a proper working Foundry on site.

I have been listening in to the first day of the Bell Foundry Inquiry. It’s not a format I’m familiar with – much of it necessarily quite technical and concerned with the details and precedents of planning law.

Those presenting evidence on behalf of Raycliff, the developer, don’t seem to me to make clear, for obvious reasons, that there are three distinct parts of the building. First, there is the original eighteenth-century part of the building fronting onto Whitechapel High Street, charming and well preserved. Second, there is the big working part of the Foundry, alongside and behind the small courtyard in the centre of the site, also broadly eighteenth-century, but with nineteenth-century industrial additions, most of which Raycliff is turning into a large themed café. And then, there is the 1980s addition at the back by James Strike, sadly not listed, which Raycliff is planning to demolish as part of the new hotel, most of which is next door.

In other words, the great majority of what Raycliff proposes totally changes the Foundry’s use, only creating a small toytown foundry towards the front of the building, the great majority of the site being turned into ancillary facilities belonging to a big 103-room commercial hotel next door.

Not surprisingly, David Elvin QC, acting on behalf of Raycliff, disguises the amount of change of use and demolition, greatly exaggerating the benefit of what is proposed in the rooms at the front.

I took a break from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry today to visit Trinity Buoy Wharf, which always lifts the spirits: so much activity going on there, including filming, and admired the view across the river to the Millennium Dome:-

I have been given permission to post the evidence submitted to the Inquiry by Sir Jeremy Dixon. I asked him if he would allow me to because it states the case so elegantly and succinctly by someone who attended lectures by John Summerson at the Architectural Association in the late 1950s. It is not just a matter of the buildings, important though they are, but more the survival and development of craft skills.

Once it is gone it is gone.

For those of you who don’t already know the work of Adam Dant, here is the necessary information. He was trained as a printmaker at the Royal College of Art, exhibits every year at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, lives in the northern reaches of Spitalfields, and makes his living as a printmaker, doing work for magazines in the tradition of Hogarth. I first came across his work when he did The Map of Spitalfields Life in 2011 and acquired his An Historical Guide to Shoreditch not long afterwards (it is dated 3000). I admire his work: it is always based on meticulous research and often has satirical bite buried in the margins.

I am so pleased to read that Adam Dant’s wonderful print of the Bell Foundry’s significance is being made available online. I love the print. It tells one everything you need to know about the bell foundry and where its bells went to – halfway across America, as well as two churches in Sydney, Australia – in a single graphic image. I’ve now read the text below it:-

Can we save the Foundry say the bells of the boundary,

it’s not too late, ask the secretary of state.

Here come investors to sweeten the deal,

don’t let this ‘blip’ stop an historic appeal.

We’ll find out the answer this week.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/10/05/adam-dants-bells-of-whitechapel/

It’s a busy morning for the Bell Foundry. I have just been rung up by someone who wants to attend the hearing and has been informed that it is now full up. This is very strange since it is not a live hearing where there would of course be limitations of space. It is being done online. So, why can’t the hearings be streamed live ? It sounds a bit like the track and trace system, where you can get a test only providing you drive to Inverness. I hope the Planning Inspectorate will make the necessary change and live stream the hearings as soon as possible, because there will be many people who want to watch how Tower Hamlets defends itself from allowing an American venture capitalist to asset strip one of its most important sites of historic preservation next door to a mosque.

I’m now posting the online version of the Observer article as it’s much easier to read in this form.

I also want to comment on a twitter post by Stephen Clarke who, as a trustee of Re-Form, has been briefing our lawyer, Rupert Warren QC. He points out that the importance of the Bell Foundry lies in what he describes as its ‘intangible heritage value’. This reminds me that Historic England has consistently argued that it has no interest whatsoever in intangible heritage value, only in the built fabric. The claim is that they have no legal obligation to pay attention to how a building is used, only to how it was built. This has always struck me as a very weak and indefensible argument for a preservation agency and I hope that a) our lawyer might be able to pick it to pieces and b) the Commissioners of Historic England (who have been unwilling to get involved throughout this whole affair) or the Department for Culture might investigate whether it was right for them to take this position, if necessary through judicial review.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/04/will-the-bells-ring-out-again-at-londons-big-ben-foundry?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Today’s coverage of next week’s Inquiry, as attached:-

My next bit of the way that the Bell Foundry has entered mainstream popular culture is a clip of Grayson Perry RA talking about how he has always wanted to make a bell. I hope it works. Technology is not my forte:-

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/1abcdf1592df1f9f7a975a9f19e856d220201003084551/b7c7990b3ed3f3d143e973a9945ba26920201003084551/cebfc4