The land north of the Artillery Ground was known as Bonhill or Bunhill Field, “part whereof, at present denominated Tindal’s, or the Dissenters’ great Burial-ground, was, by the Mayor and Citizens of London, in the year 1665, set apart and consecrated as a common Cemetery, for the interment of such corps as could not have room in their parochial burial-grounds in that dreadful year of pestilence. However, it not being made use of on that occasion, the said Tindal took a lease thereof, and converted it into a Burial-ground for the use of Dissenters.” So wrote Maitland in 1756, but before that time a large plot was added on the north, and eventually the whole cemetery measured about five acres. There at least 100,000 persons found their last resting-place, including vast numbers of Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Independent ministers. In Walter Wilson’s History of the Dissenting Meeting-houses, which might be more rightly called a history of dissenting divines, the burial of the ministers in Bunhill Fields is constantly mentioned, and the elaborate inscriptions from their tombs are given. These have, however, become much defaced, and numbers of them are now illegible. The ground belongs to the Corporation; it is not laid out as a garden, but paths have been made and seats placed in it, the gates being open during the day. The most frequented paths lead to the tombstones of John Bunyan, on the south side of the public thoroughfare in “Tyndal’s Ground,” and Daniel Defoe, on the north side, both being at the eastern end of the cemetery. Bunyan’s tomb was restored in 1862 by public subscription, a piece of the original stone being now in the Congregational Church at Highgate. The monument to Defoe was raised in 1870 by a subscription in the Christian World. Amongst other celebrities buried here were Dr. Williams, the founder of the Library in Red Cross Street (now in Gordon Square), Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles, Isaac Watts, Sir Thomas Hardy of Reform Bill fame, and several members of the Cromwell family. The Corporation restored the tombstone of Henry Cromwell, which was found seven feet below the surface.

On the south side of the Thames the largest and most important of the Dissenters’ burial-grounds was that attached to the Independent Chapel in Deadman’s Place (now called Park Street, Southwark), originally a plague-ground, and very much used for the burial of the victims. Here many more ministers were buried, whose names are household words wherever Dissenters are gathered together. I cannot say what has become of their tombstones, but the site of the ground is now only one of the paved yards in Messrs. Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery.

If the mantle of Bunhill Fields has fallen anywhere, I suppose that Abney Park Cemetery claims the distinction. It was first used in 1840, and has always been the favourite cemetery of the Dissenters, there being no separating line in it to mark off a consecrated portion. Its formation is also associated with the memory of Dr. Watts, who lived for some years, and who died, in the neighbourhood, at the house of his friend Sir Thomas Abney. There is a monument to him in the cemetery, although he was buried at Bunhill Fields, and there are many huge monuments to other eminent dissenting divines of latter days. The tombstones are crowded together as closely as it seems possible, and yet they are being constantly added to, although the greater part of this cemetery is already over-full.

UNION CHAPEL, WOOLWICH.

The first dissenting meeting-houses were in the City and its immediate neighbourhood. They were frequently but “upper rooms” in narrow courts, and had no graveyards attached to them. But when the persecution of the Dissenters, under the Act of Uniformity, was relaxed, meeting-houses and chapels sprang up in every part of London, and these, in some cases, had burial-grounds adjoining them. A few of the larger grounds, such as Sheen’s, in Commercial Road, and the one in Globe Fields, were bought by private individuals and carried on as private speculations entirely apart from the Chapels. They are described in [Chapter IX]. But of the genuine Dissenters’ graveyards i.e., the little grounds attached to chapels and meeting-houses in London, there must have been at one time or another about eighty—there may have been more. This number of course represents but a very small portion of the meeting-houses themselves, which were in existence at the beginning of this century. The following remarks of the Rev. John Blackburn, one of the secretaries of the Union of Congregational Ministers, show how the respectable Dissenters repudiated the private burial-grounds: “I may with confidence disclaim the imputation that the graveyards of Dissenters were primarily and chiefly established with a view to emolument. Many graveyards that are private property, purchased by undertakers for their own emolument, are regarded as dissenting burial-grounds; and we are implicated in the censures that are pronounced upon the unseemly and disgusting transactions that have been detected in them.... By far the greatest portion of the persons buried in these grounds are not Dissenters at all.... The denomination to which I belong have about 120 chapels in and around London, and I believe there is not more than a sixth part of them that have graveyards attached.”

In the returns of the Metropolitan burial-grounds which were made fifty or sixty years ago, those to whom the work was entrusted generally expressed their inability to find out the correct number of the Dissenters’ grounds, and Walker wrote, “I have not been able to procure any satisfactory accounts of the numbers interred in burying-grounds unconnected with the Established Church. By some parties information was refused, by others the records of the place were stated to have been lost or neglected, and in some cases the parties most interested in suppressing, had alone the power to communicate.” When I first began, twelve years ago, to make as complete a list as I could of the London burial-grounds, I wrote to the secretaries at the centres of the chief dissenting bodies, as I thought they might possess information about the burial-grounds of their own chapels. From the Congregationalists I had no reply; the Wesleyans kindly answered that they were endeavouring to procure the information, but it never came; the Baptists wrote two or three letters and took some trouble on my behalf, but they failed even to find the number of their grounds. I had, therefore, to seek my information in other ways.

The only body of Nonconformists that has kept a careful account of its graveyards is the Society of Friends. They also treated their grounds and the remains in them with greater respect (except in one notable case to which I shall refer), and they kept them neat and clean, and do so still. Walker recognised this fact as long ago as 1847. A statement respecting their graveyards was made by representatives of the Society to the committee which sat in 1843, showing that they still had considerable room in these grounds, and that they were careful not to allow less than 7 feet or 8 feet of earth above each coffin. The Friends attend to all matters connected with their meeting-houses and burial-grounds at their six weeks’ meeting, and each of these grounds has been a Quakers’ graveyard from the beginning, not changing hands, first belonging to one community and then another, as has been the case with so many of the chapel graveyards. The members of the Society have also exercised a most praiseworthy self-control by not wearing mourning, by avoiding useless expense at funerals, and ostentatious tombstones, memorials, or epitaphs. Until about fifty years ago no tombstones were used at all, as at Long Lane, S.E.; then they used small flat ones, as at Hammersmith and Peckham; and finally they adopted small upright ones, all the same shape, about a quarter of the size of the ordinary headstones in cemeteries. These may be seen at Ratcliff and Stoke Newington, the graveyard at the latter place, which surrounds the Park Street meeting-house, being still in use. I wish that every one who intends to erect a tombstone—and this is a note for Jews as well as Christians—would, before doing so, pay a visit to a Quakers’ burial-ground, and ponder on the matter there. An interesting article on the Society of Friends has appeared in the Times of January 8, 1896, in which the following words are quoted, “The Quakers—the man and the Society—must move or perish.” But I trust they may not move forward with the times in adopting more elaborate burial customs.

Four of the Quakers’ graveyards have entirely disappeared. The burial-ground for the Friends of Westminster was in Long Acre, by Castle Street. It passed out of their hands in 1757, and was built upon. In rebuilding houses on the same spot, about four years ago, many human remains were disturbed. These were claimed by the Society, which was allowed to collect them and bury them at Isleworth. There was a little meeting-house with a burial-ground attached in Wapping Street, which seems to have been used until about 1779, but was then demolished, the worshippers moving to the meeting in Brook Street, Ratcliff. The other two burial-grounds which the Friends have lost were in Worcester Street and Ewer Street, Southwark. The latter, although it adjoined their Old Park Meeting (which the King took as a guard house), may never have been used by them. At any rate in 1839 it was in private hands, and eventually disappeared under the railway. The former, which dated from 1666, was very full, so that in 1733 the surface was raised above the original level. This was demolished when Southwark Street was made (1860); and the London Bridge and Charing Cross Railway also runs over its site. The Friends then moved the remains and a number of coffins to their ground in Long Lane, Bermondsey.[[4]]

[4]. A most interesting report upon this removal was made by the Surveyor to the six weeks’ meeting, in which are contained some excellent remarks upon the futility of burying in lead coffins, nine of these being found in the ground. The graveyard had been disused since 1799.