Monument to Alexander and Mary Waugh, North Section

Reasons for Designation

Monuments to Alexander and Mary Waugh are recommended for listing at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * They commemorate a leading Scottish minister and co-founder of the London Missionary Society. * They are located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and have group value with the other listed tombs in the north section.

Details

635-1/0/10244 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Alexander and Mary Waugh, North section

GV II Sarcophagus tomb 1840, with headstone 1869

LOCATION: 532648.1, 182271.9

MATERIALS: Portland stone and granite

DESCRIPTION: Mary Waugh's monument is a small Portland stone sarcophagus with a coped lid and two moulded feet. The principal inscription describes to her life and virtues, while that on the opposite site records the setting-up of the monument in 1840. Alexander Waugh's headstone is a thick granite slab with an arched top, a moulded base and a long inscription naming Waugh as a founder and 'one of the most laborious and persistent advocates' of the London Missionary Society. Mary's name is also included, as are those of their children Alexander and Jeane, Mary's sister Jeane, and Alexander's ministerial predecessor Archibald Hall and his wife Elizabeth. A coda describes the setting-up of the present monument, 'replacing previous records', by the Waughs' surviving children in 1869.

HISTORY: Alexander Waugh (1754-1827) was a leading minister of the Scottish United Secession group and a co-founder of what was to become London Missionary Society. Born in Berwickshire and educated at Edinburgh University and Marischal College, Aberdeen, he served for forty-five years as minister at the Wells Street chapel in London, succeeding Archibald Hall. In 1786 he married Mary Neill (d.1840) of Edincrow, Berwickshire. Waugh was one of a number of evangelical clergymen of various denominations who came together in the 1790s to found the Missionary Society, which played a leading role in the spread of Christianity to Africa and the South Pacific. He also supported a number of other religious and philanthropic bodies, including the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Mill Hill Academy. He was made a Doctor of Divinity by Marischal College in 1815.

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. The latter scheme involved clearing the tombs in the cemetery's northern enclosure; the Waugh tombs were among those selected for retention.

SOURCES: Corporation of London, A History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (1902). A W Light, Bunhill Fields (London, 1915). Arthur Waugh, rev. Lionel Alexander Ritchie, entry on Waugh in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Monuments to Alexander and Mary Waugh are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * They commemorate a leading Scottish minister and co-founder of the London Missionary Society. * They are located within the Grade I registered Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (q.v.), and have group value with the other listed tombs in the north section.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

508585

Legacy System:

LBS

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