Monument To Elizabeth Stiff And Others, West Enclosure

635-1/0/10230 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Elizabeth Stiff and others , West enclosure

GV II Headstone, mid C18

LOCATION: 532632.6, 182256.3

MATERIALS: Portland stone

DESCRIPTION: The monument is an upright slab having a scrolled and shaped top with a worn relief carving apparently depicting two amorini (winged cherubs' heads), an hourglass and a coffin lid. The inscription gives a number of names including those of Elizabeth wife of Peter Clugh of the parish of St Botolph Aldersgate (d.1748?) and Elizabeth wife of Thomas Stiff (d.1777). A warning is appended below: 'Reader be thou also ready.'

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 monument to Elizabeth Stiff is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a richly-carved Baroque headstone whose admonitory inscription, still clearly legible, attests to contemporary attitudes to mortality. * 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 west enclosure.