• 1661: BURIAL GROUND BOUGHT IN 1661

Bunhill Fields burial ground was the first freehold property owned by Quakers, bought in 1661 and used until 1855 for 12,000 burials. It predates the more famous dissenters' ground across Bunhill Row, although the area ('Bone Hill') was long associated with burials. George Fox, Edward Burrough and John Bellers were buried here; among the many during the plague were 27 Quakers who died still in harbour on the ship Black Eagle 'when under sentence of banishment for the Truth', as the burial register entries read.

Graves were meant to be unmarked, as monuments were 'of no service to the deceased', but stones did appear. In about 1750 Robert Howard, an Old Street tinplate worker, found a stone marked 'G.F.', and demanded it should be hammered into rubble. At about that time, it is reported that when a wall was being removed a lead coffin was found, inscribed with George Fox's initials and age. The body was reinterred but the site was not marked until 1881.

• 1874: MISSION TENT - AN IRON ROOM.

In 1874 the Bedford Institute used the ground for a tent to hold mission meetings, and subsequently was allowed to build an 'iron room'. The tent was acquired by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, who used it for his own meetings held on another Quaker burial ground in Whitechapel.

• 1881:BUNHILL MEMORIAL BUILDINGS.

An adult school was started by the young Quakers J.B. Braithwaite jnr and J.Allen Baker (later an M.P.), and in 1880 the money gained from a compulsory purchase of land for road-widening provided the finance for the Bunhill Memorial Buildings to be built, with a coffee tavern, school rooms, a medical mission, and the first meeting house on the site.

The Bunhill Fields buildings of 1881 were extended after a few years with the Adult School attached to one side of the Meeting House and the Bunhill Coffee Tavern to the other.

• 1931: JOHN WOOLMAN SETTLEMENT.

Charles Simpson was a Barnsley miner who went to study at Ruskin College in Oxford, and later at Woodbrooke, the Quaker college in Birmingham. In 1916 he set up the John Woolman Settlement in Islington, named after an American Quaker who pioneered ethical living. Charles Simpson was active politically and became mayor of Finsbury.

In 1931 the Settlement moved to Bunhill, joining the existing adult education facilities provided by the Bedford Institute, but its activities took over much of the building, including use of the former coffee tavern as a common room.

• 1941: BOMBED.

The building was bombed in 1941, and all that remains is the caretaker 's cottage, still used today as the meeting house.

• POST-WAR.

In 1952 a new memorial stone of Westmorland slate was placed near where George Fox is thought to be buried. This commemorates the anniversary of George Fox's meeting with the Seekers in the north west of England, taken as the start of organised Quakerism.

The area to the east of the burial ground was cleared by bombing all the way to the City Road. Since then, buildings have filled the space again, including the tower block Braithwaite House alongside the burial ground.

ARCHIVE LINK

This History formed part of the text for the Exhibition 'Quakers in Shoreditch'. Link to the full text and see how Bunhill Fields fits into the history of Quakers in the City of London.