King And Du Pont Family Monument, South Enclosure

635-1/0/10260 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 King and Du Pont family monument, Sout h enclosure

GV II Pedestal tomb, late C18

LOCATION: 532684.5, 182230.5

MATERIALS: Whitewashed Portland stone with bronze uprights and sandstone slab beneath.

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a simple hexagonal pedestal with a moulded projecting top and base, and side panels held in place by means of bronze uprights (originally whitewashed over but now partially exposed), resting upon a large sandstone slab which covers the burial vault beneath. The carved text on the side panels is badly eroded, but the names of various members of the King and Du Pont families, with dates of death in the late 1700s, can still be discerned.

HISTORY: Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665. Thanks to its location just outside the City boundary, and its independence from any Established place of worship, it became London's principal Nonconformist cemetery, the burial place of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and other leading religious and intellectual figures. It was closed for burials in 1853, laid out as a public park in 1867, and re-landscaped following war damage by Bridgewater and Shepheard in 1964-5.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The King and Du Pont family monument is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a prominent and striking monument in an austere Neoclassical style, its polygonal form - derived ultimately from the Hellenistic-era Tower of the Winds in Athens - reflecting the late-C18 fashion for ancient Greek motifs. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed tombs in the south enclosure - in particular with the outstanding Greek Revival monument to Joseph Denison just to the north-west (q.v.)