Eye - 18 March 2011
From Bunhill to birds
Buried at Bunhill
One of the most important four acres in Britain, associated with Quakerism and the dissenting tradition, has been given a stamp of approval by the establishment. The cemetery at Bunhill Fields in London has been declared a grade one listed park by the government.
Founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for non-conformists, radicals and dissenters, the cemetery holds the remains of figures such as John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe and the artist William Blake.
Nearby is the Bunhill Fields Quaker Meeting House and the Quaker gardens where early Friends, such as George Fox (1624-1691), are buried.
‘Many of these people suffered a lifetime’s persecution for their beliefs before coming to rest here,’ said David Garrard of English Heritage. He advised the government that such a unique place in the history of the dissenting tradition deserved the highest grade listing and protection.
‘Paradoxically, the fact that many of those buried here would cheerfully have damned one another to hell on some minute point of theological dispute has brought them all together in this peaceful place,’ he added.
Eye feels that there is a poetic justice that, after three hundred and fifty years, the establishment has recognised, and protected, the remains of people who were persecuted for a simple belief – that their worship be dictated by their conscience and not by the state.
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