MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE

MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1396495
Date first listed:: 21-Feb-2011
List Entry Name:: MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE
Statutory Address:: MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1396495
Date first listed:: 21-Feb-2011
List Entry Name:: MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE
Statutory Address 1:: MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: MONUMENT TO DAVID NASMITH, SOUTH ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Greater London Authority
District:: Islington (London Borough)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ 32617 82222

Reasons for Designation

DCMS agree- list at Grade II.

Details

635-1/0/10249 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to David Nasmith, South enclo sure

GV II Headstone of David Nasmith, 1839, restored 1935

LOCATION: 532617.2, 182222.4

MATERIALS: Portland stone, whitewashed

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of an upright stone slab with a pedimented top. The inscription names Nasmith as a 'founder of city missions' and gives details of his birth and death. A second inscription records the monument's restoration 'by friends of the London City Mission during that society's centenary year'.

HISTORY: David Nasmith (1799-1839) was a leading early-C19 evangelical and the founder of the City Mission movement, a still-flourishing (and now worldwide) association aimed at ministering to the spiritual and physical needs of the urban poor. Born and educated in Glasgow, Nasmith devoted himself from an early age in missionary activity. The Glasgow City Mission, which he helped found in 1826, became a model for hundreds of similar organisations worldwide. The Dublin City Mission followed in 1828, and in 1830 Nasmith set off on a tour of North America, helping to set up over thirty new mission groups en route. On moving to London in 1835 he became co-founder (with Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton) of the London City Mission, a leading force in the capital's evangelical life and still in existence today.

Bunhill Fields was first enclosed as a burial ground in 1665. Thanks to its location just outside the City boundary, and its independence from 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. It 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 1964-5.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915). Gordon Goodwin, rev. H C G Matthew, entry on Nasmith in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to David Nasmith is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates an important early-C19 evangelical leader and the founder of the still-flourishing City Mission movement. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed tombs in the south enclosure.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 508616
Legacy System:: LBS

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.