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Freehold Street, LOUGHBOROUGH, LE11 1AN

Peel Drive leads off to the left and ahead is a wall sign for the Taylor Bell Foundry - this is not a historical relic, the foundry is still very much operational.

Owned by the Taylor family since 1784, and with a presence in Loughborough since 1839, the bell foundry now claims to be the largest in the world. This is the view looking westwards along Freehold Street with the campanile tower on the right.

The John Taylor & Co works is the largest bell foundry in the world and the only one remaining in Great Britain. All types of bells are produced from hand bells to massive bells intended to be hung in churches, cathedrals and other civic buildings. The foundry has been on its present site since 1859 although the business can trace its origins back to the 14th century; it is a rare surviving example of a real back street industry. Visitors to the museum can see the casting room from a viewing gallery.

The casting shop with various furnaces and bell moulds. The two gentlemen on the right towards the back were working on the inscription on a couple of bells. The big lifting metal door in the centre background is the drying oven where moulds (inner and outer) are dried. The moulds are lined by loam and they are buried in a sandpit for the actual casting. The whole establishment has a Victorian feel.

This is actually the foundry proper with the casting floor in the foreground and showing where castings have been broken out of the sandpit. There are melting furnaces against the walls for ferrous and non-ferrous metals and there are numerous outer moulds and baseplates. The vertical sliding metal door at the far end provides access to the oven where the loam moulds are dried. Unfortunately there was no casting in progress but it would doubtless be a spectacle as seen from this viewing gallery.

This is the foundry proper and the broken areas in the 'sandpit' show where some recent castings have been broken out. There is a selection of baseplates and out moulds. The actual casting is done between inner and outer moulds consisting of loam admixed with chopped straw and dung. The mould assembly is then buried in the sandpit before the molten bell metal is poured in. There then follows a cooling period before the mould is separated and the bell retrieved.

The inscriptions on a bell are included at the casting stage and are cut into the loam lining the outer casing of the mould. This outer casing is then lowered over the inner core and clamped to the baseplate prior to casting. The inscriptions are laid up in reverse and independently checked with a mirror - if they are wrong the bell is scrap. We could only see this process at a distance from the viewing gallery. Those are two sizable bells that were being prepared.

At John Taylor Bellfounders on Freehold Street.

This is a large and important complex that incorporates a museum. The casting shop is presumably alongside the stacks of the furnaces and in the distance is the work's own campanile.