Monument To John Rippon, South Enclosure

635-1/0/10250 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to John Rippon, South enclosure

GV II Chest tomb of John Rippon, 1836

LOCATION: 532620.9, 182213.9

MATERIALS: Portland stone with sandstone lid and plinth

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a stone chest with a coped lid and moulded base, flat corner pilasters and raised inscription panels. The southern panel records the burials of the Revd John Rippon and his wife Sarah. The northern panel describes the former's career, character and achievements.

HISTORY: John Rippon (1751-1836) was a Particular Baptist minister, hymnologist and religious historian. Born in Tiverton, Devon and educated at the Bristol Baptist College, in 1773 he succeeded John Gill as pastor of the important Carter Lane Church in Southwark, where he continued to serve for the rest of his life. In 1787 he published the first Baptist hymn-book, A Selection of Hymns, which went through twenty-seven editions during his lifetime. His editorship, between 1790 and 1802, of the Baptist Annual Register, and his close involvement in bodies such as the Baptist Union and the General Body of the Three Denominations, spread his influence still wider. He wrote extensively on the history of English Dissent, and his unpublished notebooks are one of the principal sources of information on the early burials and monuments at Bunhill Fields.

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). Ken R Manley, entry on Rippon in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to John Rippon is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a well-preserved early-C19 chest tomb, commemorating an important figure in the religious history of the period, and one with a particularly close connection to Bunhill Fields. * 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.