Monument To Mary Benson And Adjoining Headstone, West Enclosure

635-1/0/10229 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Mary Benson and adjoining headstone, West enclosure

GV II Two headstones, mid-C18

LOCATION: 532646.2, 182241.6

MATERIALS: Portland stone

DESCRIPTION: The monument to Mary Benson is an upright slab with a scrolled and pedimented top, beneath which are carved in low relief a scroll, crossed bones and a winged skull. A worn inscription panel below records the details of Mary Benson's life, and gives the date of her death as 1739.

The unidentified monument immediately to the south is taller and more elaborate, having a scrolled segmental top with an hourglass, three skulls and assorted bones carved in high relief. Beneath, two pilasters in the form of caryatids frame a bowed panel, its inscription now almost completely illegible.

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 Mary Benson and its neighbour are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * They represent particularly ornate and relatively well-preserved examples of early-C18 Baroque tomb sculpture. * They are 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.