Where the bells are cast
Bells have been cast within a few miles of Loughborough since the fourteenth century, a line that runs unbroken to the works still standing there today - John Taylor & Co, the last major bell foundry in Britain. The Archive documents the people who keep the craft alive.
The East Midlands is foundry country. Leicestershire and its neighbours carried the heavy trades - iron, hosiery, coal - and one craft older than all of them: the casting of bells. A founder called Johannes de Stafford was casting bells within ten miles of Loughborough in the fourteenth century, and the line has never broken. The Taylor family came into the trade in 1784 and established themselves in Loughborough in 1839.
That works still stands. John Taylor & Co is the last major bell foundry in Britain and the largest working bell foundry in the world. The Archive spent a day on its casting floor in June 2026, documenting the people who keep the craft going: the chief tuner Giridhar Vadukar, one of only three bell tuners left in the country, and the foreman Bill Bowes. Bell founding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List. Here it is still done by hand.
Makers Giridhar Vadukar is the chief tuner at John Taylor & Co in Loughborough, the last major bell foundry in Britain, and one of only three bell tuners left in the country. Forty-seven years in the trade, thirty of them here, tuning each bell’s five notes by shaving metal from the inside - by ear as much as by eye. Bell founding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers Bill Bowes is the foreman at John Taylor & Co in Loughborough, the last major bell foundry in Britain. Forty-one years with the firm, twenty-seven of them in the foundry, and the man who makes the iron that holds and swings a bell - the headstocks, the wheels, the fittings drilled and pinned to the thousandth. If Giridhar gives a bell its voice, Bill gives it the means to ring. Bell founding is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers Bell founding is the casting and tuning of bells from bronze, an English trade unbroken since the fourteenth century and now held by a handful of foundries - chief among them John Taylor & Co in Loughborough, the last major bell foundry in Britain. How a bell is moulded, cast, and tuned to its five notes by hand, why the craft is on the Heritage Crafts Red List, and who is keeping it alive.