Monument To Dan Taylor, Middle Enclosure

635-1/0/10226 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Dan Taylor, Middle enclosure

GV II Headstone of Dan Taylor, 1816

LOCATION: 532666.3, 182256.7

MATERIALS: Portland stone

DESCRIPTION: The monument is a simple upright slab with a shaped top. The inscription commemorates the Revd Dan Taylor along with his daughter Jane Wallis and son-in-law John Harden. There is a text from Revelations 21-4: 'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.'

HISTORY: Dan Taylor (1738-1816) was a Baptist minister and the founder of the New Connexion, an important federation of Baptist churches. Born the son of a coal-miner in Northowram, West Yorkshire, he received no formal education, but nevertheless began preaching - initially to a Methodist congregation - at the early age of 23. In 1763 he was received into the General Baptist church - a group combining the practice of adult baptism (which Taylor had come to believe was the only valid form of the sacrament) with the Wesleyan-Arminian doctrine of universally-available salvation by faith - and became minister to a new chapel at Birchcliffe, near Hebden Bridge. Travelling around the district to raise funds for the new building, he found many allied congregations in severe decline. To arrest this, Taylor lobbied for a nationwide union of General Baptist churches within a 'New Connexion'; this was formed in 1770, with Taylor in the chair, and for more than a century the Connection remained an influential force within the Baptist movement. Taylor himself continued to minister in Yorkshire until 1795, when he moved to London to become pastor at a leading church in Whitechapel, and tutor at the New Connexion academy in Mile End.

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). E F Clipsham, entry on Taylor in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to Dan Taylor is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates a leading figure in the history of the Baptist church in England. * 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 middle enclosure.