The Hill of Bones: the story of Bunhill Fields

Originally a stretch of open land to the north of the City of London, Bunhill Fields got its name from its use as a burial ground during the Saxon period and a macabre event that took place in the mid-sixteenth century.  Cartloads of bones from the charnel house at St Paul's Cathedral were transported out of the city and dumped in such large quantities that they formed a hill of bones, with a thin layer of soil covering the mound.  This "Bone Hill" was large enough to accomodate three windmills on top, which were presumably installed to make the most of the elevated ground.

 

The charnel house at St Paul's had been used since the 13th Century to store old bones disturbed by later burials.  During this period the concept of purgatory had become an official part of Church doctrine and it became acceptable to disinter human remains when no flesh remained on the skeleton, as it was believed that the soul only remained with the body as long as there was flesh on the bones (cremation was not authorised for Christians at this time).  This had a useful practical application as old graves could be reused for new burials, freeing up space in churchyards. The dry bones removed from old graves were then stored in charnel houses and this practice continued in Britain until the Reformation.  After the Reformation, the use of charnel houses was seen as Popish so most of them were demolished and their contents removed, which helps to explain why the human remains were removed from St Paul's and taken to Bunhill Fields.

In 1665, a century or so after the Bone Hill was created, Bunhill Fields was given authorisation to be used as a plague pit.  Thousands were dying of plague in London and the rural location of Bunhill Fields, only a short distance north of the city, made it an idea location for mass burials.  However, it is unclear whether the site was ever used as a plague pit.  It is also unclear what became of the bones from the charnel house of St Paul's.  The land passed into private hands in the 1660s and burials began in what was referred to as "Tindal's Burial Ground" after Mr Tindal, who had taken over the lease of the land.  As the burial ground was not associated with an Anglican church, it became popular with Nonconformists - those Christians who did not belong to the Church of England.  A separate burial ground for Quakers was also opened close to Bunhill Fields in 1661 - sadly today very little of it remains due to severe bomb damage during the Second World War.

Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries Bunhill Fields became the major burial ground for London's Nonconformists.  Robert Southey, a 19th century poet, described it as "the Campo Santo of the Dissenters" as so many influential Nonconformists and their families were laid to rest there.  Isaac Watts, a celebrated hymnwriter, is buried in Bunhill Fields, as is preacher and pamphleteer Richard Price, and Thomas Newcomen, a preacher and early developer of steam engines.  The mother of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, is also buried in Bunhill Fields, as is a grandson of Oliver Cromwell and the grandfather of JRR Tolkien.  The most prominent memorials today are of the famous literary figures of Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan and William Blake.

 

Daniel Defoe (yep, two blog posts in the same week featuring the same bloke) is most famous for writing the novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, but during a prolific career also produced a great deal of pamphlets and non-fiction as well as his famous, pioneering novels.  It is thought that when he died in 1731, Defoe was on the run from his creditors.  In 1870, the imposing obelisk memorial to Defoe (pictured above) was unveiled.  It was funded by an appeal in the weekly newspaper Christian World.

John Bunyan, author of the famous allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Progress, also has an impressive memorial at Bunhill Fields.  Bunyan was a popular preacher, and found himself imprisoned twice for illegally preaching in the years when it was still against the law to belong to a church other than the official Church of England.  The Pilgrim's Progress, which was probably written during his periods of imprisonment, was published in 1678 and has never been out of print since.  His impressive memorial, featuring a carved effigy of Bunyan and images representing scenes from The Pilgrim's Progress, dates from 1862.

William Blake was an artist and poet, who spent most of his life in London.  During his lifetime he was considered to be mad, but today he is regarded as one of Britain's greatest artists and poets, and his work continues to have a considerable influence on popular culture.  One of his most enduringly famous works is And did those feet in ancient time, which was adapted into the popular hymn "Jerusalem".  It is uncertain exactly where Blake's grave lies, as gravestones were moved around when the site was remodelled in the 1960s.  None were present when I visited Bunhill Fields to take photographs for this blog post, but Blake's grave is often adorned with trinkets and flowers left by his fans.

In 1853, Bunhill Fields was deemed to be full, having received around 120,000 burials since the 1660s.  Around this time, churchyards and older burial grounds were being closed and large, suburban cemeteries were being planned and laid out.  The last burial in Bunhill Fields took place in January 1854.

After the cemetery's closure, Bunhill Fields was designated as a public park and underwent some remodelling in the late 1860s.  Some memorials were removed and many were restored or relocated.  The main centre for Nonconformist burials shifted to Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, one of the new cemeteries that made up London's "Magnificent Seven".  Charles Reed, a directer of Abney Park, was also involved with the preservation of Bunhill Fields and its conversaion to a public garden.

Bunhill Fields as we see it today is a postwar creation - heavy bombing during the Second World War prompted major landscaping work and the northern part of the burial ground was cleared of its memorials, leaving a large grassy area lined with benches, which is popular with workers on their lunchbreaks.  The areas containing tightly packed gravestones were fenced off to protect the monuments, and many new trees were planted.  Today, the City of London Corporation is making effors to improve the biodiversity of the area by encouraging wildlife and wild flowers to thrive in the burial ground.  The peace and the abundance of plant and animal life make a contrast with the office blocks and busy roads nearby.

In 2011, Bunhill Fields was designated as a Grade I listed cemetery, affording it special protection.  In addition to this, 75 individual monuments are also Grade II listed, and Bunyan and Defoe's memorials are Grade II* listed.  Due to the large number of Nonconformist burials on the site, most of the gravestones are fairly plain and austere, and many of them have become worn and illegible over the years.  The gravestones are huddled much closer together in Bunhill Fields which gives it a different feel to big Victorian cemeteries such as Abney Park or Kensal Rise, which were intended from the beginning to serve as parks as well as burial grounds.  Bunhill Fields is quite a unique spot - and it is quite mind-boggling to think that 120,000 people are buried on such a small site.

 

Bunhill Fields is located between City Road and Bunhill Row in London EC1 (the nearest tube stations are Moorgate and Old Street), and it is open all year round.  Information about guided tours and access to the fenced-off areas can be found at http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/green-spaces/city-gardens/visitor-information/Pages/Bunhill-Fields.aspx

The Postman's Park and the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice

London's Square Mile is notoriously short of green space.  A crowded maze of winding streets for many centuries, the City of  London was originally bound by the ancient Roman walls and as the city expanded open spaces became further and further away for those living in the dirty and overcrowded centre of town.  Although the Royal Parks of London have a longer history, it was the Victorians who first advocated a wider movement for open spaces in Britain's industrialising towns and cities.  Much of the reasoning behind the parks movement came from the belief that the widespread disease in urban areas came from dirty air - or 'miasma' - and parks were seen as a way to improve the health of those who could not afford gardens or country retreats of their own.

It is perhaps a little ironic, then, that the subject of today's blog, the Postman's Park, is built on the site of one of the most pressing public health problems of the nineteenth century - the graveyard.  Catharine Arnold's grimly fascinating Necropolis - London and its Dead documents in gruesome detail the problems faced in Victorian London when it came to burying the city's dead. The eventual solution to the overcrowded, insanitary and undignified burial grounds dotted around London was the creation of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries in the suburbs between 1832 and 1841 - Kensal Green, West Norwood, Highgate, Abney Park, Nunhead, Brompton and Tower Hamlets - which provided huge spaces where people could be laid to rest away from the city's water supplies and with enough room that bodies would not have to be disinterred after a short time and disposed of to make way for new burials.  The Burials Act of 1851 prohibited any new burials in the old churchyards in built up areas.  Many of these burial grounds were subsequently redeveloped, but after its closure it was decided that the churchyard of St Botolph Without Aldersgate would be converted into a public park.  The following announcement was made in 1858:

The Churchwardens of the above parish hereby give notice that they intend to plant, pave, or cover over the churchyard and burial-ground. Persons having relatives interred in the said churchyard or burial-ground will be permitted (under certain regulations) to remove and inter the remains of such relatives in any burial-ground or cemetery, without the city. Persons also, to the memory of whose relatives any tomb, monument, or inscription may have been erected therein, may (under the like regulations) cause such tomb or grave-stones to be removed and taken away; but such removal, in either case, must be at the expense of the persons causing the same to be done. Applications for either of the above purposes must be made, in writing, on or before Monday, the 20th day of December, 1858. (Source)

The clearing and landscaping of the burial ground was a slow process, taking many years.  The gravestones that were not claimed by relatives were rearranged to make up the boundaries of the park and remain there today.

The park, which can be found a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral, with entrances on Aldersgate Street and King Edward Street, is on the site of the former burial grounds not only of St Botolph Without Aldersgate, but also of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard's Foster Lane.  St Leonard's was one of the churches not rebuilt after the Great Fire, and Christ Church Greyfriars was destroyed in the Blitz (its ruins are now a pleasant flower garden).  Because of its burial ground history, the ground level in the park is several feet higher than that of the surrounding streets.  The latter two churchyards were adjacent to that of St Botolph, but because of their smaller parishes and slower burial rate when they were acquired by the parish of St Botolph their ground level had to be raised to match that of St Botolph's.

Eventually opened in 1880, the park soon gained its name due to its popularity with workers from the nearby General Post Office headquarters.  Today it is still a popular place for City workers to congregate during their lunch breaks, but it is also a frequent stop for tourists due to its famous monument - the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice.

Featured in the 2004 film Closer (pictured above), the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice was the brainchild of artist George Frederic Watts and his wife Mary.  The Memorial consists of a covered walkway with memorial tablets commemorating ordinary people who had given their lives whilst attempting to save the lives of others.  The wall was unveiled in 1900, although by this point only four memorial tablets had been installed on the wall.

The memorial tablets are made of ceramic tiles, which were cheaper to produce than engraved stone.  The design and styling of the tiles is not completely uniform - although they all follow the same basic principle of green or blue writing on a white background - as the memorials were not all produced and installed at the same time.  The wall has space for 120 of these memorials but a lack of funds meant that the project was halted in 1931 with just 53 memorials in place - and only a few of these had been sporadiacally added since Watts' widow withdrew funding from the project in 1910 (although she continued to have an interest in the memorial until 1930).  The tablet below is one of the later designs produced by Royal Doulton and installed in 1908.

No new memorials were added to the wall until 2009, when a tablet dedicated to the memory of Leigh Pitt, who had drowned in a canal in 2007 after diving in to save a drowning boy, was unveiled. 

Taking in the memorials is quite a sad and poignant experience, each one telling a story that were it not for the memorial would now be forgotten, consigned perhaps to a couple of column inches in an old newspaper and no more.  George Watts personally chose many of those to be immortalised on the memorial, but with Watts in failing health, and after his death, others were chosen by a committee.  This committee was originally named the 'Humble Heroes Memorial Committee' but Watts objected to this and it was renamed the 'Heroic Self-Sacrifice Memorial Committee'.

Watts died in 1904 at the age of 87 and a special plaque designed by T.H. Wren was added to the memorial and unveiled in 1905.  It depicts Watts holding a scroll with the word 'heroes' written on it.  The caption below the figure reads 'In memorial of George Frederic Watts, who desiring to honour heroic self-sacrifice placed these records here'.

However, not quite all of the inhabitants of the park - whether they be commemorated on the Memorial or rest under the soil - are deceased.  Spend a lunchbreak in the park and chances are you will encounter the exceptionally friendly robins that live there - the little chap pictured below was tame enough to take crumbs from my hand.  These cheerful residents add to the special atmosphere of the Postman's Park - if you're in that part of town, perhaps en route to St Paul's or the Museum of London, do pop in for a look around and make time to read the memorials.  It is a peaceful oasis in one of most crowded and busy parts of London.

Much of the detail in this article is courtesy of John Price's 2008 book Postman's Park: G. F. Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-sacrifice, which was published by the Watts Gallery and can be purchased by clicking here.