Monument to James Hughes, East Enclosure
MONUMENT TO JAMES HUGHES, EAST 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:
- 1396522
- Date first listed:
- 21-Feb-2011
- List Entry Name:
- Monument to James Hughes, East Enclosure
- Statutory Address:
- MONUMENT TO JAMES HUGHES, EAST ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND
Location
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1396522
- Date first listed:
- 21-Feb-2011
- List Entry Name:
- Monument to James Hughes, East Enclosure
- Statutory Address 1:
- MONUMENT TO JAMES HUGHES, EAST ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
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.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
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.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- MONUMENT TO JAMES HUGHES, EAST 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 32772 82254
Reasons for Designation
Yes, list
Details
635-1/0/10220 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to James Hughes, East enclosure
GV II Obelisk monument to James Hughes, late C19
LOCATION: 532771.5, 182253.9
MATERIALS: Red granite with bronze plaque and lettering; sandstone plinth.
DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a tall granite obelisk with a square pedestal and base, resting on a slab plinth. The pedestal bears a Welsh-language text inset in bronze lettering. The shaft of the obelisk bears an oval bronze plaque with a bas-relief portrait of Hughes.
HISTORY: James Hughes, also known as Iago Trichrug (1779-1844) was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, hymn-writer and poet. Born in Cardiganshire and initially trained as a blacksmith, he came to London at the beginning of the C19 and began to preach at the Wilderness Row Chapel in Clerkenwell. He was ordained in 1816, and in 1823 became the founding minister of the new Jewin Crescent Chapel. (The latter is still extant, in rebuilt premises a few streets away from Bunhill Fields.) He also wrote poetry, hymns, Bible commentaries and translations, and engaged in the doctrinal disputes of the time. He was buried at Bunhill Fields in November 1844. His monument was later renewed later in the century.
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). RMJ Jones, rev. Mari A Williams, entry on Hughes in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009). Revd Gomer Morgan Roberts, entry on Hughes in Welsh Biography Online, yba.llgc.org.uk (retrieved on 9 June 2009).
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to James Hughes is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates an important figure in early-C19 Welsh religious life and literature, the founder of a local and still-extant Welsh-language church. * 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 east enclosure, and especially with that of Hughes's contemporary, countryman and fellow bard Hugh Pugh (q.v.).
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 508557
- 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.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 20-Jun-2026 at 19:12:34.
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