January 8 1759 at the age of sixty died my father Francis Hall after a declining state of health.

So Richard recorded the sad events at the start of that year. Francis died at Newington Butts, south of the River Thames, but the funeral took place at Bunhill Fields in Islington some miles away, so the cortege would have involved a slow and mournful procession behind the cart carrying my 5xGreat Grandfather’s coffin. The deceased was a Baptist and as such could not be buried in a Church of England graveyard and instead went to the burial ground favoured by Non-Conformists through the ages. Here lay John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe, John Gill (and later John Rippon), the family’s Baptist minister from Carter Lane in Southwark, along with Thomas Newcomen the engineeer and inventor, and George Whitehead the Quaker leader. Later would come William Blake and indeed Richard Hall’s own parents-in-law Benjamin and Elizabeth Seward. In all Bunhill Fields marks the final resting place for some 123,000 dissenters. The last burial took place in 1854.

  The tomb of William Blake  (Wikipedia)

The area was originally used as a dumping ground for old bones from the charnel house at St Paul’s – over a thousand cartloads of bones were brought here in 1549 forming a mound large enough to permit three windmills to be constructed on the site – whereupon it was known as Windmill Hill. Almost certainly the modern name of ‘Bunhill’ is a corruption of Bone Hill, and reflects its morbid past.

In the 1665 the Corporation decided to permit new burials on the site. A lease was granted to a Mr Tindal (and it was known for a while as Tindal’s Burial Ground) and it was while the site was in his control that it started to attract Protestant non-Conformists such as the Hall family. But there was no hard and fast rule about it – people of other faiths could be buried there as long as the burial fees were paid.

Little could Richard have known, on that damp January day 250 years ago, that such a bleak and melancholy area  would in time become a favoured place for office workers to spend their lunchtimes, sitting in nearly ten acres of a park-like setting, and gazing out over trees and grassland.

 John Bunyan's tomb, with the obelisk dedicated to Daniel Defoe in the background (Wikipedia)

Nowadays the grounds are looked after by the Corporation of the City of London, as they have since 1867. On acquiring responsibility for the area the Council carried out various site improvements, laying out new pathways and planting numerous trees. Individual tombstones were re-cut and recorded. More recently, further landscaping work was carried out in the 1960s. The area contains over 1900 simple headstones and a further 400 other monuments.

The City Gardens Team has this as its stated aim: ‘To maintain Bunhill Fields Burial Ground as a valuable, historic property with rich cultural, natural and social attributes at a local, national and international level’.

The significance of the burial ground is recognised by the fact that its historic landscape is designated as a Grade I listed entry on the national Register of Parks and Gardens, and in 2007 it was given the Green Flag award.  The public are allowed in the park every day of the year and although some of the tombs are fenced off an attendant is available on weekdays between 1.00 and 3.00 p.m. to unlock the gate (or an appointment can be made via the City Gardens Office on 020 7374 4127).

The area was originally planted up with avenues of plane trees. To these have been added oak, lime and ash trees - and even a black mulberry tree. In springtime, the base of every tree in the area of the North Lawn is swathed with crocuses, while the grass surrounding the graves to the south is carpeted with snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and hyacinths. And, pleasingly, the area is a haven for birds and other wildlife.

For anyone interested in the burial records themselves The Public Records Office contains records of burials at Bunhill from 1713 to 1854. The Guildhall Library houses other Bunhill material, including interment order books for 1789-1854. They also hold  an 1869 record of the inscriptions on the monuments as were then current. For the rest of us – sit and enjoy!

 Photograph © Gardenvisit.com

More information about the gardens, their flora and fauna, can be found on  this website: http://www.gardenvisit.com/

My ancestor Richard Hall loved to see shows, exhibitions and the like and was in his element when in 1755 he visited 18 Cheyne Walk Chelsea:

1755 – April. Was at Don Saltero’s Coffee House at Chelsea £0/13/0

Don Saltero's, from  an engraving in the British Museum

The Salter Coffee House at in  Cheyne Walk was something quite unlike any of its rivals! James Salter – or “Don Saltero” as he was generally nick-named, was quite a character and his coffee house was also a museum of curiosities. Salter had started as a barber, later becoming valet to Sir Hans Sloane. In 1693 he set up a coffee shop by the river, and Sir Hans gave him a number of historical oddities to display. He attracted custom from naval officers who gave him other curiosities brought back from around the world and which Salter displayed in glass cabinets, or hung from the walls by the thousand. He decided that a more interetsing persona would be as a Spanish naval captain, so 'Don Saltero' he became! Visitors were not charged to see the “museum” but were expected to drink coffee or buy a catalogue for two pence. We know from the catalogues – and from the auction inventory when the contents were eventually sold in 1799, that Richard would have been able to see :

“a curious model of our Saviour's sepulchre,

a Roman bishop's crosier, antique coins and medals,

minerals, fossils, antique fire-arms, curious birds, fishes, and other productions of nature,

and a large collection of various antiquities and curiosities, glass-cases, &c”

Relics included:- "King James's coronation sword; King William's coronation

sword and shoes; Henry VIII.'s coat of mail, gloves, and spurs; Queen

Elizabeth's Prayer-book, stirrup, and strawberry dish; the Pope's infallible

candle; a set of beads, consecrated by Clement VII., made of the bones of St.

Anthony of Padua; a piece of the royal oak; a petrified child, or the figure of

death; a curious piece of metal, found in the ruins of Troy; a pair of Saxon

stockings; William the Conqueror's family sword; Oliver's broad-sword; the

King of Whiddaw's staff; Bistreanier's staff; a wooden shoe, put under the

Speaker's chair in James II's time; the Emperor of Morocco's tobacco pipe; a

curious flea-trap; an Indian prince's crown; a starved cat, found between

the walls of Westminster Abbey when the east end was repaired; the jaws of

a wild boar that was starved to death by his tusks growing inward; a frog,

fifteen inches long, found in the Isle of Dogs; the Staffordshire almanack,

used when the Danes were in England; the lance of Captain TowHow-Sham,

king of the Darien Indians, with which he killed six Spaniards, and took a

tooth out of each head, and put in his lance as a trophy of his valour; a coffin

of state for a friar's bones; a cockatrice serpent; a large snake, seventeen feet

long, taken in a pigeon-house in Sumatra—it had in its belly fifteen fowls and

five pigeons; a dolphin with a flying-fish at his mouth; a gargulet, that

Indians used to cool their water with; a whistling arrow, which the Indians

use when they would treat of peace; a negro boy's cap, made of a rat-skin;

Mary Queen of Scots' pin-cushion; a purse made of a spider from Antigua;

manna from Canaan; a jaw of a skate, with 500 teeth; the mermaid fish; the

wild man of the woods; the flying bull's head……”  

Richard must have been in his element at such a display – a veritable treasure trove of tat embellished with improbable claims, the walls festooned with exhibits. But to pay out thirteen shillings – that’s a lot of coffee! In today´s money that equates to slightly more than fifty pounds so it looks as though Richard bought half the shop. I wonder whether any of the hundreds of miscellaneous odds and ends left to me with Richard´s possessions  include items from Don Saltero? Now I'm sure I saw an old sword marked "William ye Conq" somewhere around here....!