Bunhill Fields - Opening As A Community Garden

Opening As A Community Garden

Following closure of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, its future remained uncertain for a while since its lessee, the City of London Corporation, was perilously close to expiry of its lease, scheduled for Christmas 1867. In a move to prevent the land from being built upon on expiry of the lease, the Corporation formed the Special Bunhill Fields Burial Ground Committee in 1865 which became formally known as the Bunhill Fields Preservation Committee.

Appointed by the Corporation, the committee consisted on twelve advisors under the chairmanship of Charles Reed FSA (son of the Congregational philanthropist Dr Andrew Reed) who rose to prominence as the first MP for Hackney and Chairman of the first School Board for London before being knighted. Along with his interest in making Bunhill Fields into a parkland landscape, he was similarly interested in the wider educational and public benefits of Abney Park Cemetery, of which he was a prominent director.

Following the work of the committee, the City of London Corporation obtained an Act of Parliament, the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground Act 1867, "for the Preservation of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground ... as an open space". The legislation enabled the corporation to continue to maintain the site when the freehold reverted to the Church Commissioners; provided it was laid out as a public open space with seating, gardens, and the restoration of some of its most worthy monuments. The new park was opened by the Lord Mayor on October 14, 1869.

The nearby Quaker Burial ground was similarly landscaped. It became maintained at private expense by the Quakers which today provides open space around a Quaker Meeting House (the remnant of Bunhill Memorial Buildings erected in 1881 that remains after bomb damage in 1942).

The main burial ground was also severely damaged by German bombing during World War II, necessitating an expansion of the public park area in 1960, such that close to half of the former burial ground became laid out and maintained as a public garden with open access. The rest remains attractively landscaped though enclosed behind railings, to protect the areas with more delicate monuments and the whole is maintained by the City of London Corporation. Legislation in 1960 transferred the freehold to the Corporation.

Today, the earliest monumental inscription that can still be seen in the main Bunhill Fields Burial Ground reads: Grace, daughter of T. Cloudesly, of Leeds. February 1666. (Maitland's Hist. of London, p. 775.) Many monuments of historical note can be visited, in particular,

• John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress (a book translated into more languages than any other apart from the Bible)
• Dr Isaac Watts, the celebrated 'Father of Hymnology' whose hymns have been sung worldwide and was also a poet and educationalist.

Close by are the burial of many other eminent nonconformists such as the ministers Dr John Owen (d. 1683) and Dr Goodwin (d. 1679). A more complete listing of the burials of well known figures is provided below.

In February 2012 Occupy London opened a site to replace their Bank of Ideas at Sun Street in the northwestern corner of Bunhill Fields.