Monument to Joseph Hughes, Middle Enclosure
MONUMENT TO JOSEPH HUGHES, MIDDLE 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:
- 1396524
- Date first listed:
- 21-Feb-2011
- List Entry Name:
- Monument to Joseph Hughes, Middle Enclosure
- Statutory Address:
- MONUMENT TO JOSEPH HUGHES, MIDDLE ENCLOSURE, BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND
Location
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II
- List Entry Number:
- 1396524
- Date first listed:
- 21-Feb-2011
- List Entry Name:
- Monument to Joseph Hughes, Middle Enclosure
- Statutory Address 1:
- MONUMENT TO JOSEPH HUGHES, MIDDLE 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 JOSEPH HUGHES, MIDDLE 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 32702 82259
Reasons for Designation
Yes, list
Details
635-1/0/10222 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Joseph Hughes, Middle encl osure
GV II Obelisk monument to Joseph Hughes, 1874
LOCATION: 532702.3, 182259.1
MATERIALS: Granite
DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a red granite obelisk with a pedimental base, set upon a square pedestal with moulded cornice and base, resting in turn upon a square two-stage plinth. The main inscription on the pedestal chronicles the facts of Hughes' life and work, while a secondary inscription on the plinth below records the erection of the present monument 'by friends who venerate his excellencies' in 1874.
HISTORY: Joseph Hughes (1769-1835) was born at Holborn and educated at schools in Lancashire and at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. From 1791 he was classical tutor at the Baptist Academy and assistant pastor at Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol, becoming acquainted during the ensuing five years with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the writer and bluestocking Hannah More. In 1796 he returned to London to become pastor at a Baptist church in Battersea, where he remained until his death. He is chiefly remembered for his missionary activities, especially through the Religious Tract Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society, which he helped to found in 1799 and 1804 respectively.
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). Rosemary Chadwick, entry on Joseph Hughes in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to Joseph Hughes is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates an important figure in British Missionary History, the co-founder of the influential Religious Tract Society and British and Foreign Bible Society. * It is an imposing granite obelisk, testifying to increasingly monumental late-C19 modes of commemoration. * 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 middle enclosure.
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 508560
- 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 18-Jun-2026 at 07:14:03.
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