Gardens -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; Parks -- England -- London
One of the quiet spots near the City is Bunhill Fields. This has for
over two hundred years been the Nonconformist burial-ground. The
land was enclosed by a brick wall, by the City of London in 1665 for
interments “in that dreadful year of Pestilence. However, it not
being made use of on that occasion,” a man called “Tindal took a
lease thereof, and converted it into a burial-ground for the use of
Dissenters.” As late as 1756 it appears to have been known as “Tindal’s
Burial-ground.” The name Bunhill Fields was given to that part of
Finsbury Fields, on to which quantities of bones were taken from St.
Paul’s in 1549. It is said “above a thousand cartloads of human bones”
were deposited there. No wonder the ghastly name of “bone hill,”
corrupted into Bunhill, has clung to the place. At the present time the
gravestones here are undisturbed, and more respect has been shown to
them than to the bones in the sixteenth century. Asphalt paths meander
through a forest of monuments, and a few seats are placed in the shade
of some of the trees. Those who live in this poor and busy district no
doubt make much use of these places of rest, but the visitor is only
brought to this depressing, gloomy spot on a pilgrimage to the tomb of
John Bunyan. He rests near the centre of the ground, under a modern
effigy. Not far off is the tomb of Dr. Isaac Watts, whose hymns are
repeated wherever the British tongue is spoken, and near him lies the
author of “Robinson Crusoe,” Daniel Defoe. This quaint old enclosure
opens off the City Road, opposite Wesley’s Chapel, and on the western
side it is skirted by Bunhill Row. But a few yards distant is another
graveyard of very different aspect, as it contains only one stone,
and that a very small one, with the name of George Fox, who died in
1690. The other graves in this, the “Friends’ Burial-ground,” never
having been marked in any way, it has the appearance of a dismal little
garden, like the approach or “gravel sweep” to a suburban villa. But it
is neatly kept.
Of all the churchyards, that of St. Paul’s is best known, and least
like the ordinary idea of one. But this was not always so. It was
for centuries an actual burying-place. When the foundations of the
present cathedral were dug, after the Great Fire, a series of early
burials were disclosed. There were Saxon coffins, and below them
British graves, where wooden and ivory pins were found, which fastened
the woollen shrouds of those who rested there, and below that again,
between twenty and thirty feet deep, were Roman remains, with fragments
of pottery, rings, beads, and such-like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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