Monument to Edward Pickard, South Enclosure

Reasons for Designation

The monument to Edward Pickard is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It commemorates a leading Presbyterian minister of the mid-C18, who played an important role in the relaxation of state restrictions on the Nonconformist clergy.
* 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.

Details

635-1/0/10281 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND 21-FEB-11 Monument to Edward Pickard, South encl osure

GV II Headstone of Edward Pickard, late C18 or early C19

LOCATION: 532666, 182241.5

MATERIALS: Portland stone

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a tall upright slab with a shaped top. It is inscribed on both sides. The inscription on the east face commemorates Edward Pickard's 'distinguished fidelity usefulness and acceptance' in his role as minister to the Carter Lane congregation, and also records the burial of his first and second wives Sarah (d.1765) and Frances (d.1773), his son Edward (d.1825) and his daughter-in-law Eleanor Martha (d.1833). The western face is inscribed with the names of various members of the Warren family.

HISTORY: Edward Pickard (1714-78) was born at Alcester, Warwickshire and educated in Dissenting academies at Bridgnorth, Shropshire and Moorfields in the City of London. He gave up his first post as a Congregational minister in Stratford-upon-Avon due to his increasing support for Arian (non-Trinitarian) theology; in 1741 he moved to London, becoming joint (and eventually sole) pastor at the Presbyterian church in Carter Lane in the City. He is best known for having initiated, in 1772, a petition to Parliament that eventually resulted in the 1779 amendment to the Toleration Act, that (by substituting belief in Scripture for assent to the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles) greatly relaxed the doctrinal restrictions on Nonconformist clergymen.

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, vol. II (London, 1933). John Stephens, entry on Pickard in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to Edward Pickard is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It commemorates a leading Presbyterian minister of the mid-C18, who played an important role in the relaxation of state restrictions on the Nonconformist clergy. * 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:

508651

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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