John Claridge At The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Remembering John Claridge who died last Sunday aged eighty-one
John Claridge first visited the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1982 to photograph the life of Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, founded in 1570. He returned in 2016, just before it closed, to take another set of pictures. Remarkably, little changed in the intervening years.
‘It was like walking through a time portal,’ John told me. ‘There was a very tactile feeling about the place, where craftsmanship held sway, and my pictures pay testament to that feeling.’
A decade after it closed, the developers have abandoned their ludicrous plan to convert the foundry to a bell-themed boutique hotel and today it hosts property guardians while sinking into decay and acquiring graffiti. Meanwhile the London Bell Foundry continues its campaign to buy the building and reopen it as a working foundry.
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So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
How is that disgraceful saga progressing?
Any sign or hope of the foundry actually re-opening?
Great photographs, as always from John Claridge.
I have been lucky to have visited the Bell Foundry a couple of times to exhibitions shortly after it closed, so very sad that nothing has been done in the years that have followed but I’m glad to hear there are now property guardians living there.
A nat–ur–rul, as we say in Suffolk.
Sum o those bells look a bit on the huh.
Thoughtless tragedy, the only hope is that someone takes upon themselves to restart it in any way possible.
It’s a good job my Great grandfather is no longer alive to hear about this!
It’s a crying shame that the Foundry has been closed & now left to rot, entirely due to the failed hair brained hotel idea. I sincerely hope it can be rescued & restored to former glory as a working concern..