It took a spam comment here to make me realise that the archive links have been broken for some time; there was a problem with a .htaccess file (it didn’t exist).
The site has fallen into dormancy over the winter again, it’s about time I started using this domain or finally let it lapse. It would be nice to make it to a full decade of posts here, so time to generate some content.
Something like thirty years ago, I was on a bus with my grandfather passing The Whitechapel Bell Foundry; he told me a little about the place and promised to take me for a visit when I was older. Three years ago, I bought a ticket for a tour the following year, then forgot to go. Yesterday I finally toured the foundry with around 25 others, I was probably the second youngest in the tour party – very few other the others were below retirement age.
The bell foundry is the oldest manufacturing company in the UK, having been formed in 1570 (and with good evidence that it may date back to 1420 from earlier foundry works in the area). The foundry site on Whitechapel Road dates from 1738, originally having been The Artichoke coaching inn, built c1670.
The tour was interesting and through, we learned the bell-metal casting temperature, 1170 degrees C; the composition of the casting molds, a brick core covered in goat-hair, clay, sand and horse manure shaping mixture (photo); the number of harmonics a modern bell is tuned for, 5 – the same note in 3 octaves and a minor 3rd and a 5th.
At the back of the works, in the yard, a new set of bells and mounts (photo) were being prepared for St Dunstan in the west.To make best use of limited space, the hand-bell workshop and the woodworking workshop are built above the foundry floor. These workshops have rather low ceilings and beams – no one taller than 5’8″ works there. In the wood workshop where bell wheels are made, is the foundry “graveyard” commemorating those that have died while working (no details give for those, possibly an interesting story) and in retirement.
I’d love to re-visit when they actually cast a bell, but understandably they prefer not to have members of the public around when sloshing tons of molten metal around.
DG visited in 2008, around the time I booked my first, forgotten, tour.
Will this be the year I update more regularly then every few months?
I’ve always been a fan of the Manics, so had to go to the one-off gig at the O2, with them playing all 38 singles they’ve released over the years. Despite James claiming “There are many songs you might go to the bar for”, everyone stayed for Motorcycle Emptiness, and for their signature tune and grand finale “A Design for Life”, a sell out crowd lending their voices as a backing chorus.
It was an excellent evening, listening to a fantastic band playing some of their best music.
It’s 90 years ago today that the building work on the first houses on the Becontree Estate was completed. Numbers 22-28 Chittys Lane were the first to be finished on the 7th November 1921.
