This is the Guardian. The Guardian Archive Long Re. My name is Heti O'Brien.

My name is Hetty O'Brien.

I'm an assistant opinion editor at The Guardian and a regular

contributor to The Guardian Long Reed. This piece about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and the Fight

Over Its Future was published in 2021.

I was first drawn to this story because I came across a book

from 1984, which was called A Day in the Life of London.

And it was this amazing book.

It involved a hundred photographers who were given the assignment of going out to all these different places in London

and capturing the city over a 24-hour period.

And so they went to schools, into prisons, and to Turkish baths, into hospitals, and

to monasteries, and nightclubs and greasy spoons and basically everywhere that you could imagine they kind of covered.

And there was this amazing photograph of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and the outdoor courtyard adjacent to the Bell Foundry with all of these huge bells all lined up and I thought that was a really interesting photograph and then when I heard about the closure of the foundry, it was via this local

blog called Spittlefield's Life, which is run by an unnamed writer who lives in the area and writes one piece every day about what's going on.

And the blog I recommend anyone who's about to read this story to go and look at the blog as well

because I suppose in a moment when lots of local news

services have closed down and there aren't so many local newspapers, it covers the area in a really

interesting and rich way.

And then like any good story,

you start pulling on the thread

and it sort of unravels like a piece of wool from a jumper.

And there were so many twists and turns and different characters involved and although the

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