Monument To Thomas Hardy, East Enclosure

Monument to Thomas Hardy, East Enclosure

This is a grave marker dating to the mid-19th century, designed by the architect John Woody Papworth. It stands in the east enclosure of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in London.

The monument takes the form of a square stone pillar approximately two metres tall, constructed of Portland stone on a brick base. It has a stepped plinth and a barrel-shaped top bearing a relief carving of a laurel wreath and a scroll. The scroll once bore the inscription "Public Duty and Private Worth" but this is now illegible. The main body of the monument carries two long texts celebrating Hardy's virtues and achievements.

Thomas Hardy (1752–1832) was a noted political radical and founder of the London Corresponding Society, established in 1792 as a campaigning group supporting universal manhood suffrage and parliamentary reform. Born near Falkirk in Scotland, he came to London in 1774 to work as a shoemaker. His interest in politics was aroused by the American War of Independence and deepened by the writings of Richard Price and Major John Cartwright. The London Corresponding Society soon attracted the attention of the authorities, and in May 1794 Hardy was arrested and charged with high treason. He was acquitted, though a mob attack on his house before the trial may have led to the death of his wife and their unborn child. After this event he maintained a lower political profile but continued his links with other leading radicals, including Tom Paine in America, and was involved in the long campaign that eventually led to the Great Reform Act, passed a few months before his death in 1832.

John Woody Papworth (1820–1870) was an architect and antiquary born into an important family of architects and designers. He trained in his father's office and at the Royal Academy Schools, becoming an Associate of the Institute of British Architects in 1841 and a Fellow in 1846. He built little but produced numerous decorative designs and published widely on architectural topics, largely in collaboration with his brother Wyatt van Sandau Papworth, a pioneering art historian.

Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665. Located just outside the City boundary and independent of 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. The ground 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 1964–1965.