Whitechapel Bell Foundry: Home of Big Ben
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the modest brick building at 32 and 34 Whitechapel Road. It looks like an old town house with a shop window, nothing more. Yet out of the yard behind it came Big Ben, the Liberty Bell and the bells of churches on every continent.
Key Facts
| Place | Whitechapel Bell Foundry: Home of Big Ben |
|---|---|
| Address | 32-34 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1DY, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51700, -0.06700 |
| Part of Walk | Four Waves of Newcomers: Whitechapel, Spitalfields & Brick Lane in London's East End |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the modest brick building at 32 and 34 Whitechapel Road. It looks like an old town house with a shop window, nothing more. Yet out of the yard behind it came Big Ben, the Liberty Bell and the bells of churches on every continent.
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry traced its history back to 1570, which made it one of the oldest manufacturing businesses in Britain, and it had been casting on this site since 1738. Bells are cast in moulds made of loam, a mixture of sand and clay that was traditionally bound with horse manure and goat hair, and then tuned by shaving metal from inside the bell on a huge lathe. Almost nothing about the craft changed for centuries.
In 1752 the foundry cast a bell for the State House in Philadelphia. It cracked soon after it arrived, local craftsmen recast it twice, and it went on to become the Liberty Bell, a symbol first of American independence and then of the campaign to abolish slavery. A century later, in 1858, the foundry cast the great hour bell for the clock tower of the new Houses of Parliament, more than thirteen tonnes of metal, after a first bell made in the north of England had cracked during testing. The Whitechapel bell cracked too, in 1859... but it was turned slightly and given a lighter hammer, and it has been booming out the hours ever since, with that famous, slightly imperfect tone.
The foundry closed in 2017 and its buildings were sold. Plans to turn them into a hotel set off years of campaigning by people who wanted bells to be made here again, and the future of the site has been argued over ever since. It is a very East End story: a place where things were made, slowly turning into a place where things are consumed.
Next time you hear Big Ben strike on the radio, think of this quiet stretch of Whitechapel Road. Now carry on east past the street market stalls for about five minutes, until you see a long, grand Georgian front on the other side of the road, with blue glass towers rising behind it.