Monument to John Gill, South Enclosure

Reasons for Designation

DCMS agree- list at Grade II.

Details

635-1/0/10252 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to John Gill, South enclosure

GV II Chest tomb of John Gill, c1771

LOCATION: 532631.3, 182219.3

MATERIALS: Portland stone with sandstone lid and plinth

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a stone chest with a moulded lid and base, fluted and gadrooned corner balusters and raised inscription panels, none decipherable.

HISTORY: John Gill (1697-1771) was a Particular Baptist minister and theologian. Born of poor parents, Edward Gill, a woollen merchant, and Elizabeth Walker, at Kettering, Northamptonshire, he spent a very short time at Kettering grammar school, and his formal education ended at the age of eleven. Soon after his baptism on 1 November 1716, Gill began preaching; he was ordained on 22 March 1720.

By 1740 Gill was fast becoming the leading theological spokesman for the Particular Baptists in both Great Britain and America. Critical in establishing his reputation were: his Exposition of the Book of Solomon's Song (1728); A Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity (1731), designed to check the spread of Sabellianism, a heresy among the Baptists that asserted that the Trinity was one person, not three; and The Cause of God and Truth (4 vols., 1735-8), which was a major defence of the five points of Calvinism. Cementing that reputation was his magnum opus, the Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, which employed his extensive rabbinical learning. The New Testament portion appeared in three volumes in 1746-8; the Old Testament, in 6 folio volumes, was completed in 1766. This work and his Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (1769-70) became a standard part of the library of most Baptist ministers of the day. In 1748 he received a D.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen. Gill died at Gracechurch Street, Camberwell, where he lived, on 14 October 1771, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. His successor as minister to his congregation was John Rippon, whose Memoir of Gill was published in 1838 and whose tomb is nearby.

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). Michael A. G. Haykin, 'Gill, John (1697-1771)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10731, accessed 5 Jan 2010]

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to John Gill is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a well-preserved late-C18 chest tomb, commemorating an important figure in the religious history of the period, and one with a particularly close connection to Bunhill Fields. * 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:

508619

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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