We have just had one of our fortnightly meetings fund-raising to fight the planning appeal. In some ways, it feels a bit surreal in current circumstances, but in others, all the more important that we maintain the continuity of historic institutions, particularly one which has been continuously in operation since before the Great Plague and […]

I have been asked whether or not it is appropriate for members of the public to attend the public inquiry about the future of the Bell Foundry. Here is the answer, as below. Yes, it is. I gather that there is a strong feeling on the part of our legal team that good public attendance […]

We had the second meeting yesterday of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s Development Board, which has been given the task of raising £150,000 by the beginning of May to fight the legal case. We’re off to a flying start with an anonymous gift of £25,000, another of £5,000, and a promise of another £25,000, but this […]

I promised that my next post on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry would be on the subject of fund-raising for it. This has taken longer than it should have: my fault. The truth is that there are two requirements. The first is for a reasonably big injection of funds immediately (it is reckoned to be as […]

Jeremy Dixon kindly alerted me to this article, which appears in today’s Daily Mail. It demonstrates the extent to which the public mood is now wholly in favour of retaining the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a foundry and hostile to Historic England encouraging its sale to a venture capitalist as a hotel. Let’s hope the […]

The decision of Robert Jenrick to call in planning permission for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry will, I assume, place Historic England in an odd and potentially indefensible position of being required to publicly account for why they have consistently supported the redevelopment and effective destruction of such a historically important and valuable site. After a […]

I have only just heard that Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, has decided to call in the application to turn the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a hotel for review and to hold a local inquiry. This is wonderful news for all those who have campaigned against the scheme […]

I was interested to read the views of Tim Parker, the chairman of the National Trust, on the occasion of its 125th. anniversary, because he makes clear that the Trust is now at least as interested in industrial history as in its legacy of great country houses. As he indicates, attitudes to the past have […]

I have been reading the minutes of the London Advisory Committee, the sub-committee of Historic England which has dealt with the decision to revise its listing and support the Raycliff scheme for the redevelopment of the Foundry as a hotel. They have been provided to me through what was construed as a freedom-of-information request. They […]

Even in Anglesey I fret, as the year comes to an end, on the fate of the Bell Foundry. I have been helped by Charles O’Brien, the chairman of the London Advisory Committee (and, by an odd coincidence, the author of the entry on the Bell Foundry in the revised edition of Pevsner’s London East) […]