Robinson Family Monument, South Enclosure

635-1/0/10265 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Robinson family monument, South enclos ure

GV II Headstone of Samuel Robinson and family, early C19

LOCATION: 532727.5, 182228

MATERIALS: Sandstone, with Portland footstone

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of an upright slab with a shaped top containing an elliptical plaque which reads: 'The Family Grave / of / SAMUEL ROBINSON / Finsbury Place'. Below this is a band of Neoclassical ornament in the form of simple rectangular panels, continuing down the sides of the slab as a pair of short channelled pilasters topped with roundels, altogether in the stripped Neoclassicism perfected by the architect Sir John Soane. The inscription records the burials of Samuel Robinson (d.1835), his wife Marianne and their two infant children. At the base is a small shaped footstone.

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 Robinson family monument is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is an exceptionally well-preserved early-C19 monument bearing unusual 'Soanean' ornament. * 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.