John Taylor Bell Foundry

John Taylor & Co has been casting bells in Loughborough since 1839, and the foundry is the last of its kind in the UK. Tours give a rare look at a manufacturing process that has remained essentially unchanged for six hundred years: molten bronze poured into clay and loam moulds, the bells cooling slowly, then tuned individually by removing metal from the inside until each note is perfect.

The foundry tour takes about an hour and is available on selected days — booking in advance is recommended. The adjacent bell ringing museum explains the social history of change ringing and its peculiar English character. If you have any interest in craft manufacturing, industrial history, or simply want to understand where church bells come from, this is one of the more surprising and memorable visits in the East Midlands.

things to do museum sight
A story
John Taylor & Co cast the tenor bell of the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster — Big Ben — though that was for the second bell, after the original cracked. Their most famous commission is the Millennium Bell, the largest bell ever cast in the UK at 18.5 tonnes, now housed in a specially constructed tower. Every bell cast here is tuned by hand using a tuning lathe, a process unchanged in centuries.