Monument To William Shrubsole, North Section

635-1/0/10241 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to William Shrubsole, North s ection

GV II Headstone of William Shrubsole, 1806, relocated 1964-5

LOCATION: 532642.4, 182300.8

MATERIALS: Sandstone

DESCRIPTION: The monument is a simple upright slab with a shaped top. The inscription names Shrubsole as 'Composer of Miles's Lane' and is carved with the opening bars of the song represented on a musical stave. A secondary inscription records the burials of John and Mary Tolkien.

HISTORY: William Shrubsole (c.1760-1806) was born in Canterbury and educated as a chorister at the Cathedral Choir School. He was appointed organist at Bangor Cathedral, but his Nonconformist sympathies led to his dismissal in 1784; shortly afterward he moved to London to become organist at Spa Fields Chapel in Clerkenwell. He was also a noted music teacher and singer, and wrote the famous hymn tune 'Miles Lane'.

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. The latter scheme involved clearing the tombs in the cemetery's northern enclosure; Shrubsole's tomb was one of those selected for retention.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915). JC Hadden, rev. Nilanjana Banerji, entry on Shrubsole in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to William Shrubsole is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates a noted C18 musician and hymnodist. * It bears an unusual inscription including the opening bars' of Shrubsole's best-known hymn tune. * 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 north section.