We went on a trip to Walthamstow to see one of the oldest allotments in London, ten acres of common land opened not long after the passing of the Inclosure Act in 1850 and cultivated in small plots ever since:-

I can’t not post the photographs by John Claridge in today’s Spitalfields Life: they are so powerful, so densely textured, so beautifully composed and, above all, so recent. It was all intact in 2016 – the sense of history, the accumulation of dirt, the feeling that one was walking into another era. The argument has been that the moment it was closed, it is impossible to resurrect, but the building is still there, the memory, all the records, some of the people who worked there, providing it continues to be used for its original purpose, but not as a hotel:-

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/10/09/john-claridge-at-whitechapel-bell-foundry-o/

As someone on my Comments section sensibly suggested, I have now checked as to whether or not it is OK to make comments on the legal proceedings while the Inquiry takes place. The advice is that it’s not, not least because it might be irritating to the Inspector. So, you may all be pleased to hear that I am going to go quiet on the topic until the end of the month in order to await the formal findings and final decision.

If meanwhile, you are interested in finding out what is going on, there is a twitter feed which is run anonymously which is likely to provide some level of independent running commentary on what is going on:- (https://twitter.com/SavetheWbf?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor).

Alternatively, of course, you can attend yourself by writing to elizabeth.humphrey@planninginspectorate.gov.uk and logging in, but the hearings are going to take place all next week and are not going to end till the end of the month. The only bit of it which I will really miss is the visit to Middleport Pottery, which I have only seen from the outside and provides a good model for how to keep an old craft industry going in a new economic environment.

Before I log out, it is probably worth re-iterating that a legal Inquiry is a very expensive business. It sometime feels to me a bit like David and Goliath: a small-scale charitable organisation intervening to prevent a rich American plutocrat from despoiling a piece of London heritage. Many of my blog followers have already contributed very generously. Indeed, they have made the recruitment of Rupert Warren QC possible. But we are still about £15,000 short of what we need to cover our expenses. The simplest way to give is to go to the relevant page of the Re-Form website which has all the relevant information as to how to do it, including a Gift Aid Form:-

https://re-form.org/whitechapel/information

Finally, I want to thank all my friends and blog followers for their generosity and valiant support. We await the decision.

I’ve spent a long day listening to two conservation experts be cross-examined as to why and how they think the historic character of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is best conserved by a) demolishing the adjacent 1980s extension and turning it into a hotel lobby b) building a massive 103-room hotel next door in a style which somehow simulates the original bell foundry in a totally kitsch way c) turning the majority of the surviving bell foundry into a ‘themed’ café d) putting in a little toy foundry in a small space next door to the courtyard e) separating the toy foundry from the café with a brand new, intrusive glass screen. The clear advice of Historic England is that the best way of retaining the historic character of a building is to retain its original historic use. Conversion into a modern hotel is nothing like its original use. So, it seems pretty obvious at the end of the day that the best way of retaining its character is to reinstate it as a Foundry, as Re-Form and Factum Foundation have together imaginatively and persuasively proposed.

In reflecting on the first day of the proceedings of the Public Inquiry into the proposed conversion of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a hotel, there is an obvious and glaring weakness in Raycliff’s case. That is, that during the hearings on the first day, it became clear that, as one would expect, Alan and Kathryn Hughes, the fourth-generation owners of the Bell Foundry, had very good links with other companies in their line of business, not least through their fellow membership of one of the city livery companies. So, the obvious question is: what effort did they make to transfer the business to others in the same trade, including the offer of a management buy-out, before they sold it on the open market to Vince Goldstein ? And can they document these attempts ? One is left with the strongest possible impression that they made no effort whatsoever to keep it going as a Foundry in order to maximise the commercial benefit of a sale to a developer and chose to ignore the legal requirement for a change of use, assuming that if they couldn’t make a commercial success of it, nobody else could. But this doesn’t stack up as an argument when you look at the legal requirement for change of use.

In writing about museums for my book (now designed, index done, just awaiting the final version of the text), I got very interested in the issues and controversy surrounding Peter Zumthor’s designs for the new LACMA. This morning I read the long piece about it in the current New Yorker, too late for my bibliography:- (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/12/the-iconoclast-remaking-los-angeles-most-important-museum).

I have realised from the commentary that the critics felt that the article corroborated their hostile views, maybe because of Zumthor’s final dismissive comment about not worrying about the cost. I didn’t read it like that at all. I felt it helped to explain and interpret why Michael Govan had chosen Zumthor when he moved to LACMA in 2006 and was a reminder that there were already plans in place to demolish the Pereira buildings, which may now be regarded as a period piece, but would have been incredibly expensive to refit and were never completely satisfactory (Rick Brown the Director had wanted Mies van der Rohe to design it and left to go to the Kimbell where he was able to employ Louis Kahn). It was also a reminder that Zumthor is a great architect. It may be a high risk strategy, but it is a bit too late to lament the loss of the Pereira buildings now they have been pulled down.

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.