Campaigners hope to block plan for luxury hotel development and reopen historic site as a working factory
It is part of the nation’s heritage and a powerful symbol of parliamentary democracy, signalling the passing of each hour for more than a century and a half. When Big Ben was brought to the Palace of Westminster on a trolley drawn by 16 horses in 1858, cheering crowds gathered on the streets to salute the giant bell’s passage.
Now the place it came from, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in the East End of London, where master craftsmen cast some of history’s most notable bells, is the subject of a public inquiry starting next week over plans to turn the historic site into a luxury hotel.
