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.
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:-
Today’s post about the Bell Foundry is one of the more unusual, but demonstrates the cultural reach and resonance of what is happening. It’s an episode of a programme called Celine’s Salon on Soho Radio in which Celine Hispiche, the host of the programme, sings a song of lament about the possibility that the Foundry might be destroyed. I found it unexpectedly moving that the ideas and issues which we have been struggling to get over should now have gone so mainstream in popular culture and she speaks very well about the issues as well as singing her lament.
It is the second item on her programme from three days ago, so you have to scroll through the first nineteen minutes. I recommend it:-
You read it here first. I’m so pleased to see that the Daily Mail is such an eager reader of my blog.
We’re moving in to the final stages of our fight to save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry after nearly four years of discussion and debate. Historic England have decided not to appear at the Inquiry. This is intriguing. They have led the support for what the developers are planning to do, they refused to upgrade the listing to Grade 1, they paid no attention to the fact that John Summerson recognised the historic importance of the Foundry in the first edition of Georgian London, published in 1945. Maybe they have realised that they have backed the wrong horse and do not want to be fighting any longer on the wrong side. Maybe it has dawned on them that treating the building only in terms of its building fabric and not in terms of what happened inside was the wrong approach. Whatever the views at Historic England’s headquarters, the public body which has supported the destruction of the bell foundry has withdrawn, leaving Tower Hamlets vulnerable to the view that they, too, have failed to recognise one the greatest heritage assets in the borough, complacently allowing commercial interests to win over local and community value. I hope you will all be watching and praying when the Public Inquiry opens on Tuesday that the Inspector will see that the wrong decision was made by Tower Hamlets Planning Committee and that it is right that that decision should be overturned.
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