Monument To Sarah And John Wheatly, East Enclosure

Monument to Sarah and John Wheatly, East Enclosure, Bunhill Fields Burial Ground

This is an upright slate slab headstone dating to 1790, made from Swithland slate and carved by J Winfield of Wymeswold in Leicestershire. The monument is exceptionally well preserved.

The top of the slab features an inset roundel containing funereal emblems carved in relief. A naked human figure bearing a scroll marked 'Ashes to Ashes' contemplates a flaming urn marked 'Dust to Dust' and a skull marked 'Mortality'. The figure stands atop a globe bearing text from Shakespeare's Tempest: 'The great Globe itself - shall dissolve, &c. &c.' To the left is a snuffed-out candle, while at the base are a crucifix and an anchor, representing faith and hope respectively. The roundel is surrounded by incised ornament—an urn above, with scrolls, garlands and plant tendrils below and to either side—which extends downwards to form a decorative border around the main text.

The heading 'In Memory of...' is carved in Gothic script with elaborate scrollwork. Below are epitaphs to Sarah Wheatly (died 1790) and her husband John (died 1823), set side by side in two columns. Sarah's epitaph in the right-hand column features a variety of ornamental scripts and a short devotional verse, while John's epitaph in the left-hand column is considerably shorter and simpler. At the base, beneath a garlanded urn, is the sculptor's signature: 'J Winfield / Wymeswould Leicestershire / Sculpsit.'

The Winfields of Wymeswold were a noted family of 18th-century memorial sculptors, working principally in local Swithland slate. Several of their tombs survive in the Charnwood Forest area, including Grade II listed examples in the churchyards at Stanton on the Wolds and Upper Broughton in Nottinghamshire. The availability of Midlands slate in London from the later 18th century onwards was made possible by the growth of the canal network.

Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665. Located just outside the City boundary and independent from any Established place of worship, it became London's principal Nonconformist cemetery, and the burial place of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and other leading religious and intellectual figures. The burial ground 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. This monument demonstrates the coexistence of the relatively naïve figurative traditions of earlier centuries with the more sophisticated Neoclassical decoration characteristic of the late Georgian period, and represents a rare London example of work by this leading Midlands family of sculptors.