BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, SOUTH ENCLOSURE

BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, 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:: 1396503
Date first listed:: 21-Feb-2011
List Entry Name:: BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, SOUTH ENCLOSURE
Statutory Address:: BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, SOUTH ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II
List Entry Number:: 1396503
Date first listed:: 21-Feb-2011
List Entry Name:: BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, SOUTH ENCLOSURE
Statutory Address 1:: BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, 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:: BLAND FAMILY MONUMENT, 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 32708 82220

Reasons for Designation

The monument to the Bland Family is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a well-preserved slate headstone of 1767. * The inscription is clearly legible, something of a rarity in Bunhill Fields, and the pious epitaph is representative of the many lost inscriptions on other headstones in the burial ground. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed monuments in the south enclosure.

Details

635-1/0/10263 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Bland family monument, South enclosure

GV II Headstone of the Bland Family, 1767

LOCATION: 532707.5, 182219.6

MATERIALS: Slate, its durability ensuring a clearly legible inscription.

DESCRIPTION: The headstone has a shaped top and an inscription on one side. It commemorates first Master Thomas Bland, died June 1767, aged 10 months, and then his mother Mrs Mary Bland, died December 1767, aged 26. Her epitaph reads: 'Here rests a woman, good and without pretence, / Blest with plain reason and with sober sense. / So unaffected, so compos'd a mind; / So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so resign'd. / Heaven as its purest gold by tortures try'd, / The saint sustained it, but the woman dy'd.' Finally, it records the death of Mr Thomas Bland, Mary's husband, in 1777.

HISTORY: 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. Nothing is presently known of the Blands, other than what is revealed by their headstone.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to the Bland Family is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a well-preserved slate headstone of 1767 * The inscription is clearly legible, something of a rarity in Bunhill Fields, and the pious epitaph is representative of the many lost inscriptions on other headstones in the burial ground. * It is located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and has group value with the other listed monuments in the south enclosure.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 508631
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.