The Whitechapel Bell Foundry Is For Sale
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Graphic by Rob Ryan
A new chapter opens in the ongoing saga of the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry as the American developers put the building up for sale. When their option lapsed to buy the land at the rear of the foundry, where they had planned to build their tower of hotel rooms with a swimming pool on the top, we knew that the ill-conceived bell-themed boutique hotel scheme was dead and it was only a matter of time before this outcome arrived.
Shame on all those who killed the world’s most famous bell foundry that operated in Whitechapel for five hundred years from the reign of Elizabeth I to the reign of Elizabeth II, where the Liberty Bell and Big Ben were cast.
Shame on Alan & Kathryn Hughes, the last bell founders, who indulged in asset-stripping, selling off the building to a property developer despite the foundry staff’s offer to buy out the business as a going concern. Shame on Historic England for abnegating their responsibility by advocating the bell-themed boutique hotel over the scheme to re-open the building as a fully-working foundry. Shame on John Biggs, then Mayor of Tower Hamlets, and the former Labour Councillors who acted like neo-liberals, voting for the destruction of the historic foundry for the sake of a chain hotel and betraying their responsibility to the people of Tower Hamlets for whom the world-famous Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a key element of our collective heritage.
Shame on the Planning Inspector at the Public Inquiry who decided that the bell-themed boutique hotel was the Optimum Viable Use for a centuries-old bell foundry. Shame on Chris Pincher, the subsequently disgraced MP, who conveniently stood up in parliament and ‘misspoke’ prior to the Public Inquiry. By announcing on record that Robert Jenrick, then Secretary of State, had called in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for an Inquiry to save it, Pincher compromised the entire process so that if the Inspector had found the option of the fully-working foundry as the Optimum Viable Use then he would be open to the charge of pre-determination.
Shame on all these people and organisations who delivered this outcome, destroying jobs and priceless cultural heritage while wasting so much public money in the process, defending the developers rotten proposal despite the overwhelming weight of public opinion against it.
Meanwhile, the building has been sitting quietly decaying while providing valuable housing to property guardians. And the London Bell Foundry has been established by those of us who fought since 2016 to stop the hotel, creating the viable alternative plan with the central involvement of Factum Foundation, world leaders in digital casting.
Even as the bell-themed boutique hotel scheme foundered, the London Bell Foundry successfully delivered the first bell commission at the Royal Academy this summer. In support of our campaign to reopen the foundry, Grayson Perry designed the End of Covid Bell which will be seen next at the Royal London Hospital prior to a tour of major hospitals nationwide, enabling those who have been bereaved by Covid to visit and toll the bell in remembrance of their loss.
The challenge now for the London Bell Foundry is to acquire the building in Whitechapel and reopen it as a fully-working foundry, employing a marriage of new and old technology, establishing the foundry as an international centre for the culture and science of bell-founding, and maximising the educational potential, through apprenticeships for local people and work with schools and colleges in East London.
Graphic by Rob Ryan
Grayson Perry’s End of Covid Bell being installed at the Royal Academy Summer Show
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At The Regis Snack Bar
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These are the Rapacioli brothers – Sergio & Dinos – who run the celebrated Regis Snack Bar, nestling at the foot of the Lloyds Building beside the entrance to the Leadenhall Market in the City of London. As a point of reference, Sergio is the one who resembles George Clooney while Dinos has the rugged Bruce Willis features.
Now you know which is which, in the same manner that Sergio & Dinos like to keep tabs on their regular customers with nicknames such as Million Dollars, Queen Mum, Bill Clinton, Muscles, Lady Victoria, Carlos the Jackal, Kitten, Sir Robin, Black Eye, Mulder, Hovis, Dr Legg, Loophole and the Commander. And it is testament to the charisma of the Rapaciolis and the reputation of the Regis Snack Bar in the City that patrons delight to be addressed in this way when they come to buy their lunch – appreciating that the acquisition of a colloquial term of endearment here indicates they have truly arrived in the Square Mile. As Sergio proudly confirmed for me, “They all answer to their nicknames, they won’t answer to any other.”
“I’ve been here forty-five years, since the mid-seventies, and Dinos – my younger brother – he’s been here a couple of years less. My father and mother, Guiseppe & Angela Rapacioli, they bought the place in 1968 from one of my father’s uncles who had it since the fifties. I think there has been a cafe here over eighty years.
I did a couple of things before I came here, I was a diamond cutter in Hatton Garden, and I worked at Browns in South Molton St, buying and selling fashion. At that time, we were the only people in London stocking Armani and Versace. I used to go the shows in Milan and Venice, and it was a great time – all the parties with models and the designers. I did it from twenty to twenty-four and I enjoyed that part of my life.
But my father kept saying, “You’ve got a great business here,” and the pay wasn’t great, so I gave it up and came to work at the Regis Snack Bar. It was a sure thing and it’s what I’m good at, and it’s very satisfying when people come back again and again. We start at six and go home at four, five days a week. The customers here are pleasure to deal with, it’s a buzz, and the day goes by.
I was born in Holborn. When we were children, my parents had a restaurant in Theobalds Row but in 1969 we moved out to East London. When I started here in the City there were still a few old guys in bowler hats and we used to open until six because you’d get the Lloyds’ crowd in for tea and a slice of cake in the late afternoon. This market had two butchers then and a couple of fishmongers, they had been here for years but they all left because of the high rents. It was fabulous at Christmas with all the pheasants hanging up.
The boom was in the eighties, people stuck credit cards behind the counter and drank champagne all day. Now, there are some people don’t come in to buy sandwiches any more, they’re bringing packed lunches from home, but most of the people in the Square Mile, their spending hasn’t changed.
It got quieter when people got made redundant and a few regulars disappeared yet, for those who kept their jobs, it was business as usual. It’s a busy little community here and we still have plenty of regulars who kept us going through the last recession because we’ve been here such a long time. They all know us by our first names.
It’s hard, you’re up early and you’re on your feet all day, my knees and ankles have gone. After the years, it takes its toll on your legs. I have no regrets because it’s been good to us, but there are easier ways to make money.”
Sergio told me his grandmother, Domenica, was born in London but the family returned to Italy when war broke out. As the only English speakers in their remote rural community, any British or Allied soldiers and airmen who needed to hide were brought to them, and the family offered shelter until these men could escape to safety. A framed certificate of commendation hangs today in the Regis Snack Bar in remembrance of this extraordinary act of bravery and Domenica’s grandsons uphold the Rapacioli tradition in their own way by offering a refuge of civility in a very different world.
Around one o’clock, the men and women in suits come out of Richard Rogers’ stainless steel Lloyds building, escaping to cross Leadenhall Place into the cosy wood-panelled chalet-style Regis Snack Bar with its Gill typeface upon the fascia. Hungry for hot toasties and breaded escalopes in ciabatta, and hungry for the affectionate daily ritual of name-calling at the last classic cafe in the City of London.
“I should have been on stage, I’m wasted in here!”
Sergio & Dinos’ grandmother Domenica Rapacioli was a war hero, sheltering airmen shot down in Italy.
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Around Billingsgate
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Fish Porters at Number One Snack Bar next to St Magnus the Martyr
These intriguing photographs are selected from a cache of transparencies of unknown origin acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute. We believe they date from the nineteen-sixties but the photographer is unidentified. Can anyone tell us more?
Looking west along Lower Thames St and Monument St
Sign outside St Mary-At-Hill
Pushing barrows of ice up Lovat Lane
Passage next to St Mary-At-Hill
Carved mice on a building in Eastcheap
Old shop in Eastcheap
Billingsgate Market cat
Inside the fish market designed by Horace Jones
Old staircase near Billingsgate
The Coal Exchange, built 1847 demolished 1962
Part of London Bridge crossing Lower Thames St, now removed
The Old Wine Shades, Martin Lane
Sign of a Waterman, now in Museum of London
In All Hallows Lane
Derelict site next to Cannon St Station
Looking towards Bankside Power Station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, now Tate Modern
Old Blackfriars Station
The Blackfriar pub
Sculptures upon the Blackfriar
Sunrise over Tower Bridge
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Betty Levy Of Petticoat Lane
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Betty
If you walked through the Petticoat Lane Market in the nineteen-twenties, you would frequently have seen Betty Levy with all her sisters playing hopscotch or skipping games in the street. You could easily have distinguished Betty because she was the baby with the mop of curls, and everyone knew Betty’s mother Hannah – famous as the best fish fryer in the Lane.
But maybe you do not remember, because maybe it is just too long ago for you? Yet that was certainly not the case for Betty herself. At ninety-two years of age, she remembered her childhood as if it were yesterday and given any opportunity she delighted to break into the same songs she sang then, accompanied by the ingenious lyrics she composed herself.
Betty left Petticoat Lane in 1954 but occasionally when speaking of the Lane, she said “And I’m still here,” and you realised it was a statement which transcended immediate reality, because while Petticoat Lane has changed almost beyond recognition, Betty still carried a world and a society and an ethos that incarnated the Petticoat Lane she knew, the place she always counted as home.
“I was born here, in Rosetta Place off Frying Pan Alley and my mother Hannah before me. My grandparents, Mark and Phoebe Harris, lived in Rosetta Place too and if we went in their flat, they always gave us something to eat.
My family have been here for generations, I always understood they were of Dutch descent. My father, Isaac, worked in Smithfield Market, he sold sweets to the porters and we never starved, so he must have made a living. They called him ‘Kosher’ and he sold the sweets from a basket round his neck. He got them from a small warehouse in Commercial St run by Mr Sam. If we were well behaved, he gave us one.
I went to the Jews Free School in Frying Pan Alley, it was a good school with good teachers and they treated us well. My grandmother sometimes gave me a plate of roast potatoes and told me to go and give them to the children in the park, and she left fried fish on the window sill for people to take. Nobody starved in the East End.
When I left school at fourteen, I went to work making dresses in Middlesex St, we were taught how to do it at school and I moved from one factory to another to better myself. I made all my family’s clothes, my children and grandchildren, and their bride’s dresses. If you spend your life doing something, you get a talent for it – I got to be as good as anyone at it. And I miss it now, I wouldn’t mind doing it again, part-time.
I was only seven years married when my husband Danny died aged thirty-nine, I think he had a heart attack. I met him at a dance at the Hammersmith Palais. We met dancing, we were both good dancers, not fabulous but pretty good. We were married at the Beaumont St Synagogue and we lived with my family at first. Then we found a house in Milward St, Whitechapel, round the back of the London Hospital. Although I was one of a large family, I only had two children – a boy and a girl, Irene and Stephen. After Danny died, my family offered to support me, but I wanted to be independent. If you’ve got to do it, you do it. I worked making dresses and I kept us, because I didn’t want anyone else to bring up my children.
I love the East End, there’s something in the East End that’s nowhere else. It is my home.”
Four of Betty’s sisters in Rosetta Place c. 1925
“We played among the doorsteps, for hours and hours
We never had gardens, so we couldn’t grow flowers.
Some kids they never had shoes, ’cause their dads were on the booze
But, we all lived together the Christians, the Jews
And the Jewish Free School was in dear old Frying Pan Alley.
Now there is not any doorsteps, they’ve knocked them all down,
They built a tower block where we played around.
The kids don’t play now like we used to,
On everybody’s doorsteps, in the East End of town.”
Betty’s new lyrics to the melody of ‘On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep’
The Levy Sisters. Sally, Phoebe, Lily, Carrie, Jennie, Becky and Betty (in front).
The Mitchell Family, neighbours in Rosetta Place. Betty Mitchell standing with Betty Clasper and little RayRay in front and Anita Mitchell, Barnie Mitchell, Siddy Segal and little Jo in line along the wall.
Some of the Levy grandchildren on the steps of St. Botolph’s Church Bishopsgate c. 1945. Alan, Diana, Bobby, Roy, Richard, Sallyann and little David.
Betty’s grandparents, Mark & Phoebe Harris, Spitalfields, c. 1920
Betty’s mother, Hannah Levy, daughter of Mark & Phoebe Harris, and famous as the best fish fryer in Petticoat Lane.
Betty’s father, Isaac in his ARP uniform.
Hannah Levy and friends in Frying Pan Alley around 1940.
Betty as a Land Army Girl in WWII, based at Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire.
Three Bettys (Levy, Cohen and Hyams) and three American airman at Westcliff-on-Sea c. 1945
At the centre (in a headscarf) is Betty with family and friends at the Coronation 0f Queen Elizabeth II. They slept out in Piccadilly to be sure of getting a prime position.
Betty sings at her ninetieth birthday party at Beaumont St Synagogue
Betty dances with her daughter Irene at the party.
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Rob Ryan & The East End Trades Guild
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by Rob Ryan
As one of those who conjured the EAST END TRADES GUILD into existence back in November 2012 to advocate for the interests of local small businesses, I am beyond proud to announce the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Guild. During such challenging times for independent enterprises, its role is more vital than ever.
In celebration of such an auspicious moment, the Guild have commissioned ROB RYAN to design this year’s map of East End traders which will be available free from all members on Small Business Saturday 3rd December.
Your deadline to join the Guild and be featured on the map is Monday 10th October. Small businesses, independent shops, social enterprises, charities and self-employed people can join.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE EAST END TRADES GUILD
All members will be invited to our huge tenth anniversary party for the East End Trades Guild on 23rd November at the Bishopsgate Institute which will include a presentation by yours truly, and Paul Gardner promises to wear a suit.
I shall be hosting East End Trades Guild walks around Spitalfields on Small Business Saturday, revealing the diverse histories of the shops that make the place and telling the story of the origins of the Guild here in London’s traditional heartland for small traders and independent endeavours.
The founding of the East End Trades Guild in 2012 photographed by Martin Osborne
Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Baron & Founder of the East End Trades Guild
Symbol of the East End Trades Guild designed by James Brown, 2012
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Frank Merton Atkins’ City Churches
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Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1 October 1957
A collection of photographs by Frank Merton Atkins – including these splendid pictures of City churches were donated to the Bishopsgate Institute by his daughter Enid Ghent who had kept them in her loft since he died in 1964.
‘My father worked as a cartographer for a company of civil engineers in Westminster and he drew maps of tram lines,’ Enid recalled, ‘Both his parents were artists and he carried a camera everywhere. He loved to photograph old pubs, especially those that were about to be demolished. Sometimes he got up early in the morning to take photographs before work and at other times he went out on photography excursions in his lunch break. He was always looking around for photographs.’
Captions by Frank Merton Atkins
All Hallows Staining Tower, 25 June 1957, 1.22pm
Cannon Street, looking west from corner of Bush Lane, 7 June 1957, 8.21am
St Botolph Aldgate, from Minories, 31 May 1960, 1.48pm
St Bride from Carter Lane, 31 May 1956, 8.20am
St Clement Danes Church, Strand, from Aldwych, 14 October 1958, 1.22pm
St Dunstan in the East (seen from pavement in front of Custom House), 13 June 1956, 1.14pm
St George Southwark, from Borough High Street, 14 August 1956, 8.15am
St James Garlickhithe, from Queenhithe, 20 May 1957, 8.23am
St Katherine Creechurch, 27 May 1957, 8.32am
St Magnus the Martyr, from the North, 26 June 1956, 8.17am
St Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street, 26 June 1956, 8.23am
St Margaret Lothbury, 2 August 1957, 1.12pm
St Margaret Pattens, from St Mary At Hill, 13 June 1956, 1pm
St Mary Woolnoth, 8 August 1956, 5.49pm
St Pauls Church, Dock Street, Whitechapel, 3 September 1957, 1.09pm
St Pauls and St Augustine from Watling Street, 7 May 1957, 8.25am
St Vedast, from Wood Street, 30 July 1956, 8.17am
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Return Of Sue Hadley
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Sue Hadley returned recently for an afternoon to revisit some of her childhood haunts and I had the privilege of accompanying her.
“From the age of three, I grew up here in James Hammett House on the Dorset Estate in Bethnal Green. It was a good old Labour council and each of the buildings was named after one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Architecturally they are quite special, designed by the Tecton partnership. I used to slide all the way down the handrail of the spiral staircase, which is similar to the one they did for the penguin pool at the Zoo. We lived at the top of the building, on the tenth floor, and we were the very first residents to move in in 1957. But I stayed up at the top, I was not allowed to come down and play for many years – which was a disappointment. Once I was old enough to be allowed down, then the whole of the estate was my playground. Mum was a machinist working from home and Dad was a leaded light maker working in the Kingsland Rd.”
Sue on the balcony at James Hammett House
“This is Jones Dairy where I used to come with my Mum to do our shopping – cornflakes and tins. It was a proper traditional grocer with a man behind the counter in a white coat, Mr Evans. If you asked for a packet of cornflakes, he would get out his stick and stretch up to the shelf for it. My Mum was uncomfortable shopping here because she did not like people to know what she was buying.”
“At four years old, I started nursery school here at Columbia Rd School. I could see it from my house and I used to walk to school once I was old enough. It was a good school and I had a good education. The East End was being elevated then and we were lucky to have some excellent teachers. It was quite disciplined and I got told off once for being late for morning assembly. I got in with two children who said, ‘Shall we go to the sweetshop and buy sweets instead?’ So I spent my sixpence pocket money on sweets and then I went to school and I got told off. I was placed in front of everyone in the hall and my wrist was slapped several times as punishment. I wasn’t too riotous, I think I was quite academic. English and Art were my best subjects. I still have one long-standing friend, Carol, who I met here. My parents were completely thrilled when I got a place at Central Foundation School and I left at twelve.”
“Round the corner from us was a bomb site known as ‘the black buildings.’ Subsequently, I found out it was the Columbia Rd Market founded by Angela Burdett Coutts. It was an open bomb site and the most dangerous of places to play. We used to dare each other to go in because it was so creepy. There were dead cats and boys threw things at you. It was a place of mayhem but it was fun.”
“When I was eight years old, my sister who was twelve years older than me, got married here at Shoreditch Church. My Mum made the bridesmaid dresses but my sister splashed out on a proper bridal dress from Stoke Newington. It must have been quite a stretch because my sister paid for most of her own wedding. She still has all the original receipts! I remember thinking how boring the service was, it just seemed to go on for ever and ever. They went on honeymoon to Canvey Island. It was a successful marriage, they were married almost sixty years until she lost her husband last year.”
Sue stands central as bridesmaid at the wedding of her sister Barbara to Ron
“When I was a kid, the most exciting thing to do on a Sunday was to come here to Sclater St with my Dad. He would buy sensible things like boxes of broken biscuits and tins with no labels on, he was quite a cheapskate. Afterwards, I would drag him down here to the shops with birds in cages. There was donkey for sale here once and people brought their puppies to sell. It was all a bit dodgy which was why they shut it down eventually. However, for me it was the most exciting thing because I could play with the puppies and kittens although I never got to own one. We always had a budgie at home, it was always called ‘Jackie’ because we had a succession of them. We didn’t keep it in the cage, our bird was free the fly around the flat. Some escaped.”
“Central Foundation School For Girls was prestigious and I had the best education, with the broadest range of subjects. It was the time of the equal rights movement and our teachers were quite right on. The hall was where we did sports and I remember playing volley-ball and smashing one of the lights. I did fencing and my teacher was in the Olympic team, she did well.
I was completely daft because I got engaged at fifteen when I was still at school. Although the world was moving on, in the East End we never quite got it. My parents’ aspiration for me was that I should not work in a factory, so I worked in an office. I left school and went to work at Central Electricity Board in Newgate St as a copy typist. It was clean, it was a step up. I also got married and moved to Gravesend, but it all fell apart after two years because I hated being away from London. I felt like a fish out of water and I came back. When I walk these streets, I feel like I belong.
Ten years ago, I became a Blue Badge Guide. I have always been interested in history, so I did an Open University degree at forty. I have Huguenot ancestry and am descended from Sarah Marchant who was buried in Christ Church, Spitalfields, in the eighteenth century.
It all came good for me in the end because I have so much knowledge in my head and it really helps me doing my guiding. I love it.”
Sue in the fencing team at Central Foundation School for Girls
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