Quaker Gardens is a small public garden in the extreme south of the

London Borough of Islington The London Borough of Islington ( ) is a London borough in Inner London. Whilst the majority of the district is located in north London, the borough also includes a significant area to the south which forms part of central London. Islington has ...

, close to the boundary with the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

, in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. It is managed by Islington Borough Council. It comprises the surviving fragment of a former burying ground for

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

(members of the Religious Society of Friends), in use from 1661 to 1855. George Fox (d. 1691), one of the founders of the movement, was among those buried here. The gardens lie to the west of Bunhill Row, to the south of Banner Street, and to the north of Chequer Street, and can be entered from either Banner Street or Chequer Street. In addition to the public garden, the site includes a children's playground and a tarmac ball court with basketball hoops. A

Quaker meeting house A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held. Typically, Friends meeting houses are simple and resemble local residential buildings. Steeples, spires, and ...

, the last remaining part of the former Bunhill Memorial Buildings, stands at the north-west corner of the gardens.

History

The site lies in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. The name derives from "Bone Hill", which is possibly a reference to the district having been used for occasional burials from at least Saxon times, but more probably alludes to the use of the fields as a place of deposit for human bones – amounting to over 1,000 cartloads – brought from St Paul's Cathedral

charnel house A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves. The term can also be used more generally as a description of a pl ...

in 1549 when that building was demolished. In 1661 the London Quakers purchased a plot of land here of 30

square yard The square yard (Northern India: gaj, Pakistan: gaz) is an imperial unit and U.S. customary unit of area. It is in widespread use in most of the English-speaking world, particularly the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Pakistan and India. ...

s for £270 for use as a burial ground: it constituted the first freehold property owned by Quakers in London.Butler 1999. This was four years earlier than the opening of the nearby "

Dissenter A dissenter (from the Latin ''dissentire'', "to disagree") is one who dissents (disagrees) in matters of opinion, belief, etc. Usage in Christianity Dissent from the Anglican church In the social and religious history of England and Wales, and ...

s'" burial ground, on the other side of Bunhill Row, which is still known as Bunhill Fields. As well as burials arising from routine deaths, the bodies of 1,177 Quakers who died in the

Great Plague The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

of 1665–6 were buried here. The ground was soon full, but additional plots of land were purchased to extend it, until by c.1845 about £3,600 had been invested in the site. The ground was closed for burials in 1855, by which date around 12,000 burials had taken place.Holmes 1896, pp. 141–42. Graves were not individually marked with monuments or gravestones. The sole exception was a small tablet on the wall, simply inscribed "G. F.", in commemoration of George Fox (1624–1691), one of the founders of the movement. However, so many Quakers came to visit this that it was denounced as "

Nehushtan In the biblical Books of Kings ( 2 Kings 18:4; written c. 550 BC), the Nehushtan (Hebrew: ''Nəḥuštān'' ) is the name given to the bronze image of a serpent on a pole. The image is described in the Book of Numbers, where Yahweh instructed M ...

" (idolatrous) by Robert Howard, a prominent member of the Society, and was destroyed.Holmes 1896, p. 142. Fox is now commemorated by a more modern marker, also set against the wall. Quaker Gdns plaque 2020

In the 1870s the Bedford Institute Association (BIA), a Quaker mission, began to hold meetings at the ground, initially in a tent and subsequently in a corrugated iron room. In 1880 a large part of the burial ground was acquired by the

Metropolitan Board of Works The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of local government in a wide area of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, defined by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, from December 1855 until the establishment of the London Cou ...

for road-widening and building purposes, including the building of a

Board school School boards were public bodies in England and Wales between 1870 and 1902, which established and administered elementary schools. School boards were created in boroughs and parishes under the Elementary Education Act 1870 following campaigni ...

. These parts of the site were cleared of burials, and the exhumed bodies reinterred in the surviving part of the burial ground. With the proceeds from the sale of the land, the Quakers built Bunhill Memorial Buildings (opened 1881), which was leased to the BIA: it incorporated a large Meeting House, committee rooms, an adult school, a reading room, a medical mission, lodging rooms, and a

teetotal Teetotalism is the practice or promotion of total personal abstinence from the psychoactive drug alcohol, specifically in alcoholic drinks. A person who practices (and possibly advocates) teetotalism is called a teetotaler or teetotaller, or is ...

" Coffee-Tavern Club". The burial ground suffered bomb damage in the Second World War, and in 1944 the Memorial Buildings were largely destroyed. The only part of the Buildings to survive was the detached caretaker's house, which was redeveloped by the BIA in 1976, and is still in use as a Quaker Meeting House.

Notable burials

* Ann Austin (d. 1665), travelling Quaker preacher *

John Bellers John Bellers (1654 – 8 February 1725) was an English educational theorist and Quaker, author of ''Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry'' (1695). Life Bellers was born in London, the son of the Quaker ...

(1654–1725), political and educational theorist and writer * Joseph Gurney Bevan (1753–1814), writer of Quaker apologetical works * Edward Burrough (1634–1663), Quaker leader and controversialist *

Joan Dant Joan Dant (1631–1715) was an English pedlar. Born in Spitalfields, in the East End of London, she married a weaver. Upon her husband's premature death, she was forced to become a pedlar, selling goods to fellow Quakers in the environs of Lond ...

(1631–1715), pedlar * George Fox (1624–1691), a founder of the Quaker movement * John Nickolls (?1710–1745), collector and antiquary * Daniel Quare (1649–1724), clockmaker * George Whitehead (1636–1723), Quaker leader and author of memoir, ''The Christian Progress of George Whitehead''

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

* {{Coord, 51, 31, 25.23, N, 0, 5, 27.78, W, scale:1563_region:GB, display=title 1661 establishments in England * Cemeteries in London Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Islington Quakerism in England Quaker cemeteries Quakerism in London