Bunhill Fields

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Bunhill Fields adalah sebahagian dari rumah besar Finsbury (terdahulunya Fensbury), yang adalah dari antikuiti hebat, rumah besar itu mempunyai asal usulnya sebagai sebuah prebend St Paul's Cathedral ditubuhkan pada 1104. Pada 1315 rumah besar prebendary telah granted oleh Robert de Baldock kepada Mayor dan commonalty of London, membenarkan lebih kecapaian orang ramai pada sebuah kawasan besar fen atau moor memanjang dari ssempadan City of London (Tembok London), ke kampung Hoxton.
Pada 1498 sebahagian dari landskap tidak dipagari telah dimuatkan tepi untuk membentuk sebuah padang besar untuk latihan pemanah dan warga ketenteraan lain, dan juga hari ini bahagian rumah besar ini masih memegang nama "Artillery Ground". Di samping dengan ini terletaknya Bunhill Fields, nama yang berasal dari "Bone Hill", yang kemungkinan suatu rujukan pada daerah ini yang telah digunakan untuk pengembumian sekali-sekala dari lebih kurang zaman Saxon, walaupun lebih mungkin ia berasal dari peristiwa-peristiwa tidak biasa pertengahan kurun keenambelas. Pada lebih kurang 1549, sebuah kereta sorong penuh dengan tulang-tulang manusia telah secara zaman dibawa sini - sesetengah seribu loads in total - to make space in St Paul's charnel house for new interments. The dried bones were simply deposited on the moor and capped with a thin layer of soil, leading to such topographical elevation of the otherwise damp, flat fens, that three windmills could safely be erected in a spot that came to be known as Windmill Hill.

Opening as a burial ground

In keeping with this tradition, in 1665 the City of London Corporation decided to use some of the fen or moor fields as a common burial ground for the interment of bodies of inhabitants who had died of the plague and could not be accommodated in the churchyards. Although enclosing walls for the burial ground were completed, the ground was, it appears, never consecrated or actually used by the authorities for burials. Instead, a Mr Tindal took over the lease. He allowed extramural burials in its unconsecrated soil, which became popular with Nonconformists - those citizens of London or surrounding villages who treasured the independence of their religious beliefs and therefore practised Christianity outside of the Church of England. The burial ground, which became known as "Tindal's Burial Ground" attracted mainly dissenters from the Established Church who were of a Protestant persuasion, partly owing to their much larger numbers in the locality than other faiths who did not conform to the Church of England's ways, such as Catholics or Jewish citizens. Nonetheless, the burial ground was open for interment to anyone who could afford the fees.
Something of its seventeenth century origins can be seen today in an inscription at the entrance gate to Bunhill Fields: This church-yard was inclosed with a brick wall at the sole charges of the City of London, in the mayoralty of Sir John Lawrence, Knt., Anno Domini 1665; and afterwards the gates thereof were built and finished in the mayoralty of Sir Thomas Bloudworth, Knt., Anno Domini, 1666.
In 1769 an Act of Parliament gave the City of London Corporation the right to continue to lease the ground from the prebendal estate for a further 99 years. This enabled the City authorities to continue to let the ground to their tenant as a burial ground; although in 1781 the Corporation decided to take over the management of the burial ground directly.
So many historically important Protestant nonconformists chose this as their place of interment, that the nineteenth century poet and writer Robert Southey gave Bunhill Fields the memorable appellation: the Campo Santo of the Dissenters; a phrase that also came to be commonly applied to its 'daughter' cemetery at Abney Park.
Thousands of Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends) are buried in the neighbouring Quaker Burying Ground. This was purchased as the burial place for London Quakers in 1661, becoming their first freehold burial land in London.

Closure as a burial ground

In 1852 the Burial Act was passed which enabled places such as Bunhill Fields to be closed once they became full. Its Order for closure was made in December 1853 and the final burial (Elizabeth Howell Oliver) took place on January 5 1854. By this date approximately 120,000 interments had taken place.
Two decades before its closure, a group of City nonconformists led by George Collison, secured a site for a new landscaped alternative - in Stoke Newington. This was named Abney Park Cemetery, and opened in 1840. Here too all parts were to be made available for the burial of any person, regardless of religious creed, making Abney Park Cemetery the only Victorian garden cemetery in Britain with "no invidious dividing lines" and a unique nondenominational chapel (see the architecture of William Hosking).
The neighbouring Nonconformists' ground, the Quaker Burying Ground, was also closed for burials in 1855.