The attached article published online by Apollo spells out the current hope for the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It will require the various heritage agencies, including Tower Hamlets and Historic England, to come together in support of a plan to reinstate Bell making in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It would enable not just the historic fabric […]

I see that the Art Newspaper is reporting the availability of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for rent (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/01/everything-has-a-price-estate-agent-lists-historic-foundry-that-once-cast-big-bens-bells). It’s a wonderful site and I can see that it could potentially be turned into an art gallery. But I am still hoping that the relevant heritage agencies – most notably, Historic England, Tower Hamlets and the […]

The Art Newspaper have just published the latest news about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. For those, who do not have a subscription, the answer is NOTHING. After being sold in 2017 (I thought it was November 2016), and Historic England allowing, and even encouraging, it to be dismantled – one of the greatest sites of […]

There is a certain irony in the fact that, after more than a year since the developers were given permission by the Department for Levelling Up to turn the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a boutique hotel, absolutely nothing has happened and the site has been left to decay. Yet, at the same time, the company […]

I caught a glimpse of Grayson’s bell at the RA last night, with Grayson himself beside it. Let’s hope it will draw further attention to the plight of the Bell Foundry and the tragedy of its loss:-

I woke up this morning to the news that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was for sale. I suppose this was inevitable. COVID has changed the economics of development. I can’t help noticing that there are now a vast number of new hotels round Aldgate, including a new Hilton in the Minories, a big new hotel […]

I did a talk last night at the London Salon alongside Dickon Love, the King of the London Bell Ringers. He talked movingly about bell ringing. I had not fully realised the extent to which quite a number of the most important bells in the City Churches are actually quite recent, all of them made […]

I think it is probably worth saying that the group of people who were involved in trying to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry between 2016 and 2021, including Adam Lowe, who has demonstrated so clearly and brilliantly through Factum Foundation and now the London Bell Foundry that it should be possible to re-establish a working […]

In case you think I have entirely given up on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, I was pleased to discover a post about the sound recordings of bells cast by the Foundry held by the London Metropolitan Archive (Both Sides Now – The Curious Case Of The Whitechapel Bells – London’s Sound Heritage (wordpress.com)). Robert Jenrick […]

I wanted my hundredth post about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to be an announcement that Robert Jenrick had instructed the new owner of the Bell Foundry to keep it as a Bell Foundry, something he could so easily have done. No such luck. Instead, I am posting the inscriptions on a bell I noticed recently […]