Monument To Mary Page, Central Broadwalk

635-1/0/10248 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Mary Page, Central broadwalk

GV II* Chest tomb of Mary Page, 1728

LOCATION: 532654.5, 182254.8

MATERIALS: Weathered white marble, repaired in Portland cement

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a large rectangular stone chest with a coped lid and a stepped base, raised up on a high plinth. The inscription on the south side reads: 'HERE LYES DAME MARY PAGE / RELICT OF SIR GREGORY PAGE BART. / SHE DEPARTED THIS LIFE MARCH 4 1728 / IN THE 56 YEAR OF HER AGE'. That on the north side records how 'IN 67 MONTHS SHE WAS TAP'D 60 TIMES / HAD TAKEN AWAY 240 GALLONS OF WATER / WITHOUT EVER REPINING AT HER CASE / OR EVER FEARING THE OPERATION'. The short ends display diamond-shaped hatchments.

HISTORY: Dame Mary Page (d.1728) was the wife of Sir Gregory Page, first baronet, a wealthy City merchant and East India Company director who served two terms as MP for New Shoreham, West Sussex. Both husband and wife attended the Baptist church in Devonshire Square, and were known for their charitable activities among the Dissenting community. Dame Mary's tomb indicates that she suffered from a disease whose treatment required numerous operations to drain off excess fluid from her body; it has been suggested that this was what is now known as Meigs' Syndrome.

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). Charles Sebag Montefiore, entry on Sir Gregory Page, second baronet, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009). JP Griffin, 'Dame Mary Page: The First Recorded Case of Meigs' Syndrome?' Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 30.5 (1996).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to Dame Mary Page is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons: * It is an exceptionally large and imposing early-C18 chest tomb. * It bears a remarkable and moving inscription, of interest both to medical history and as a testament to its occupant's Christian fortitude. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the surrounding listed tombs.