Monuments To Joseph Cartwright And The Family Of Js Percy, Middle Enclosure

The monuments commemorate Reverend Joseph Cartwright and the family of Reverend JS Percy, dating to the early 19th century, and are located within the Middle Enclosure of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground.

The two sandstone monuments stand side by side. The monument to Reverend Cartwright (who died in 1800) features an arched top and notes his incumbency at Lant Street Chapel in Southwark. It includes a verse reflecting on death and the afterlife. Below the verse, the monument to Reverend Percy, located to the south, has a shaped top and records the burials of his infant son and daughter, who died in 1800, his two-year-old grandson Henry Davis (who died in 1829), and his adult daughters Eliza and Ann, who died within a week of each other in 1833. Further inscriptions detail the burials of his wife Sarah (who died in 1831) and Reverend Percy himself. This monument also includes a verse referencing the passing of infants to a “throne above.”

Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665 and became a significant cemetery for Nonconformists, including figures such as John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, and William Blake. The cemetery closed in 1853 and was later landscaped and re-landscaped over the years.

The monuments are designated at Grade II for their versified inscriptions, which provide insight into Evangelical perspectives on mortality and family tragedy. They also have group value within the context of the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground and the other listed tombs.