Monument To Samuel Favell, North Section

635-1/0/10239 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Samuel Favell, North section

GV II Coped stone monument to Samuel Favell, late C19

LOCATION: 532649.1, 182284.9

MATERIALS: Granite

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a rectangular coped stone in red granite on a low stone plinth. The main inscription names Samuel Favell as being 'of Flemish descent, a member of the Court of Common Council 1810-1829, founder of Mill Hill School 1807, a promoter of Sunday schools, Catholic emancipation, the University of London, Guildhall Library and the New London Bridge He strongly opposed slavery and the cruelties of the then-existing criminal code.' The other face is inscribed with the names of Obadiah Arrowsmith (d.1805), Catherine Arrowsmith (d.1810) and John David David (d.1825).

HISTORY: Samuel Favell (1760-1830) was a London merchant, politician and philanthropist. As a member of the Common Council of the City of London he was a leading champion of political and social reform: it was he who tabled the historic motion that eventually led to Parliament's repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts - C17 legislation excluding non-Anglicans from public office - in 1828. Along with the Yorkshire clergyman and theologian John Pye Smith he was a co-founder of Mill Hill School, London's principal Nonconformist boarding school.

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; Barber's tomb was one of those selected for retention and relocation.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915). 'Mill Hill School', in VCH Middlesex, vol.1, pp.307-8, www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?comid=22138 (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to Samuel Favell is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates one of the foremost Dissenting laymen of early-C19 London, a key figure in the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and other reform movements. * 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.