Monument To John Bunyan, Central Broadwalk

Monument to John Bunyan, Central Broadwalk, Bunhill Fields Burial Ground

This Grade II* listed monument commemorates John Bunyan (c.1628–88), the Puritan writer and preacher famous for his religious allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. The monument takes the form of a rectangular stone chest set upon a low plinth and surrounded by cast- and wrought-iron railings. It is constructed in Portland stone with a sandstone base. On top of the chest lies a recumbent effigy of Bunyan, which has been significantly damaged by wartime shrapnel. The side panels are framed by corner balusters and display relief carvings depicting scenes from The Pilgrim's Progress. The fielded end panels bear inscriptions: the panel at the effigy's feet reads "John Bunyan, Author of The Pilgrim's Progress Obt. 31st Augt. 1688, Aet. 60.", while the panel at the head records that the monument was "Restored by public subscription under the presidency of the right honourable the Earl of Shaftesbury, May 1862".

John Bunyan was born the son of a Bedfordshire metalworker and received at least an elementary education. During the English Civil War, at around sixteen years of age, he enlisted on the Parliamentary side. After the war, he joined a local Dissenting church where he discovered a gift for preaching and disputation. His first book, published in 1656, was a polemical attack on the Quakers, followed by further works directed at conventional spirituality and the Church of England. His outspoken preaching led to his arrest in 1660. Refusing to recant his opinions or compromise with the authorities, he remained imprisoned in Bedford Gaol for more than eleven years. Despite suffering periodic psychological torment, Bunyan produced an extraordinary quantity of literary work during his imprisonment, including The Holy City (1665), a spiritual autobiography entitled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), and a first draft of The Pilgrim's Progress, which was finally published in 1678. Following his release, he resumed an itinerant preaching life and published further polemical works including The Holy War, written during the succession crisis of the early 1680s, and the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress in 1684.

The monument was restored in 1862 by Edgar George Papworth Sr (1809–66), a prominent Victorian sculptor trained by Edward Hodges Baily and at the Royal Academy Schools, where he won two silver medals and a travelling scholarship to Italy. Papworth's work on the Bunyan monument, one of his few public sculptures, involved the restoration of an earlier effigy and the addition of relief panels to the sides of the tomb.

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, and the burial place of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and other leading religious and intellectual figures. The burial ground 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 monument is one of the principal landmarks within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground and has group value with the other listed tombs in the central broadwalk.