There was a gun-manufacturing foundry at Windmill Hill, now Tabernacle Street EC2, until an explosion on 10 May 1716. Captured French guns were being melted and the liquid metal was poured into moulds which were (unintentionally) damp. The moulds exploded, killing Mathew Bagley, the founder, and 16 others, and injuring several important visitors.
Widely known as the King’s Founders the foundry had been the principle supplier of heavy weaponry to the military. To replace it the Royal Brass Foundry was established in Woolwich in 1717.
The ruins of Bagley's Foundry were brought back into use in 1739 when John Wesley took a lease on the building, had it repaired and, as the Foundery, it became his first London chapel and the first Methodist Book-room. He had the City Road Chapel built and moved his congregation there in 1779. The Foundery pulpit and some pews can now be seen in the City Road Wesley Chapel.
This drawing shows the building c.1830.
has a good post about this building.
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