Monument To Alexander Henry And Family, South Enclosure

635-1/0/10255 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Alexander Henry and family , South enclosure

GV II Table tomb of Alexander Henry and family, 1809

LOCATION: 532646.4, 182203

MATERIALS: Portland stone with sandstone lid

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a stone table, with a moulded top and a supporting structure of dumb-bell section - i.e. concave on its long sides and bowed on the short ends. This substructure is treated as an elongated Gothic pier with multiple mouldings at cap and base. Both sides and ends have ogee-arched panels; that on the eastern end reads ALEXR. HENRY Family Vault 1809.

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 Alexander Henry is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a well-preserved early-C19 table tomb of highly unusual Gothick form. * 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 south enclosure.