A traditional date of 1570, and a site from 1738.

The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was, by its own account, among the oldest businesses in Britain. Its history page said: “An entry in the Guinness Book of Records lists the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, having been established in 1570 (during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I) and being in continuous business since that date.” It celebrated its quatercentenary in 1970. The Factum Foundation calls 1570 “a traditional foundation date,” and suggests the business may have grown out of an earlier foundry in nearby Aldgate; we treat both as tradition rather than record.

The foundry occupied its premises on Whitechapel Road, in East London, from 1738, it said. From 1904 it was owned by the Hughes family; at the end, its directors were Alan and Kathryn Hughes, so the family ran it for more than a century. Its old trade sign survives in its own words: the best handbells, it said, were made “‘at the sign of the three bells’ in Whitechapel.”

Its most famous bell was a second attempt. The first Great Bell for the Palace of Westminster was cast by John Warner & Sons at Stockton-on-Tees in August 1856 and cracked in October 1857. Whitechapel recast it under George Mears on 10 April 1858, at about 13½ tons — “the biggest bell ever cast at Whitechapel,” the foundry said. That bell, Big Ben, itself cracked in September 1859, and still rings.

The last tower bells, 22 March 2017.

The foundry announced its own end. On 1 December 2016 it said that “by May 2017 it will cease its activities at the Whitechapel Road site.” In April 2017 it said that it had cast its last batch of tower bells on 22 March; the very last went to the Museum of London. Wikipedia gives the closure date as 12 June 2017. Upgrading the buildings, the foundry said, would have cost “upwards of £8m.”

The name, however, did not close with it — and that was deliberate. The foundry’s April 2017 statement said: “The continuation of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry name and the unique sound and shape of our bells are assured for the future.” It explained how: “Whitechapel tower bells will in future be cast by Westley Group Ltd”; Whites of Appleton, bell hangers it had worked with for 197 years, bought “the pattern equipment”; and handbells and small bells went to a new company, Bells of Whitechapel Ltd, to be “cast and finished in London.” The archives went on contract to the London Metropolitan Archives. Companies House still lists Whitechapel Bell Foundry Limited as active, classed as an archives business.

The site has had a separate life. It was sold to Raycliff, which planned a hotel. After a public inquiry in October 2020, the Secretary of State granted planning permission and listed-building consent on 13 May 2021 for a 103-bedroom hotel with “part retention of B2 land use (foundry),” following the inspector’s recommendation. Campaigners, including the Factum Foundation and Re-Form Heritage, had set up The London Bell Foundry Ltd, incorporated in February 2020, to try to keep founding on the site; we found no evidence that the hotel has been built, or that their bid succeeded. The Factum Foundation says a petition against the hotel drew more than 28,000 signatures, that the campaign was joined by Nigel Taylor, the foundry’s foreman for 40 years, and that Raycliff tried to sell the building in 2022.

A listed building and a critically endangered craft.

The buildings are protected. Historic England lists the Whitechapel Bell Foundry at Grade II*, list entry 1357529, first listed in 1950, describing it as “a distinctive, cohesive complex of domestic and industrial buildings spanning nearly 300 years of occupation.”

Heritage Crafts, which keeps Britain’s Red List of Endangered Crafts, lists bell founding as “critically endangered,” saying it now “takes place almost solely in Loughborough at the John Taylor & Co Bellfoundry, the last major Bellfoundry in the country.” That is a stark change from the days when London had a foundry famous enough to cast Big Ben.

Bell metal is a bronze of roughly four parts copper to one of tin — “approximately 78% copper and 22% tin,” according to the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, “heated in a furnace to above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.” Tin is the scarce ingredient: the US Geological Survey estimates world tin mine output at about 290,000 tonnes in 2025, and says the average New York dealer price for refined tin rose 13 per cent that year, to 1,600 cents a pound.

Whitechapel’s name also sits on the Liberty Bell’s history, with a correction. The original was ordered from Whitechapel in 1751 and cast there in 1752; it cracked when first rung, and the Philadelphia founders John Pass and John Stow recast it in 1753. The bell on display in Philadelphia today is that recast, according to the US National Park Service. And the bell rung at the opening of the London 2012 Olympics was designed and tuned by Whitechapel but cast by Royal Eijsbouts in the Netherlands.

The sign of the three bells.

Whitechapel’s brand was always its place and its age, both written into the company name itself: the street name in the company name, the 1570 date, and the old sign of the three bells. Its website masthead read “THE WHITECHAPEL BELL FOUNDRY LTD.” in capitals, and its standard bell ropes had red, white and blue “sallies,” the woollen hand-grips.

For a design guide, Whitechapel is the clearest case in this round of a brand separated from its building. The foundry closed; the site may become a hotel; but the name, the bell shapes and the patterns were deliberately handed on. Under our rule for defunct businesses we say so plainly: the Whitechapel Road foundry closed in 2017, and bells sold under the name are now cast elsewhere. Compare Taylor’s in Loughborough, which went into administration in 2009 and was rescued within a month by a consortium of bell ringers and investors.

For this guide we use an oxblood and a blush with a serif, an unofficial interpretation. No bell, sign or logo is reproduced.

Keep Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.