Bunhill Fields

I've been on an IT course this week, just off the City Road on Tabernacle St. 

This is the City Road:-

(although surprisingly lacking in cars, it seems, when I took this photo).

It was a good course, and I took the opportunity on one of the days to have a look at Bunhill Fields - which is quietly amazing.

I can't claim to know the history well.  It is the former Dissenters' burial ground and contains the graves of many Nonconformists.  Here are just a few of the more famous:

John Bunyan (note Pilgrim),

Daniel Defoe (this monument was erected some time after his death as the base shows),

and William Blake.  The headstone commemorates him and his wife, but it isn't exactly where he is buried (and it says 'nearby' for misleading reasons). 

The "Friends of William Blake" give detailed instructions - if perhaps a little trainspotterish - on how to find his grave site.  If I've got it right, it is somewhere around here (roughly):-

Nowadays, Bunhill (once the 'Bone Hill', I gather, and the graves were very densely packed in), is a rare, quiet and tranquil, green place in the City, and lots of people were just sitting eating sandwiches and reading the paper. But I wandered around, exploring.

... and then I came across something rather surprising...

I didn't go looking for this headstone - nor was it fenced off like some parts of Bunhill Fields.  I just turned around and there it was. 

William Shrubsole - as it says - was known for writing a hymn called 'Miles Lane' and he was the organist at Spa Fields Chapel. (Note, he also had a well-known son of the same name - which can make some of the historical commentaries a little confusing).

The other people commemorated here are John Benjamin Tolkien and his wife Mary.  Wikipedia currently - and rather lazily - claims he is the grandfather of  JRR Tolkien, but the dates are all wrong.    

JRRT's grandfather was also a John Benjamin, but he was born, in 1807 - and he also took a wife called Mary (but she was born in 1834; she was his second wife) - and he is buried in Staffordshire.  The records seem to show JRRT's paternal great grandfather as Geroge William Tolkien. It is possible that the Tolkien who is buried here was related - possibly a father or uncle.

At the time I saw the stone, I didn't know all this of course, so I just sat and thought about the possibility of a relationship, and how "Miles Lane" sounded (I can't read music).  JRR Tolkien would have liked the trees that surround the graves.

Directly outside the entrance to Bunhill Fields is the Wesley Chapel and Museum (John Wesley is apparently buried around the back).

It is hardly surprising the course I had was in Tabernacle Street!

Finally, I noticed this building sitting incongrously beside the cemetery:

There seemed to be a few military personnel hanging around, and it claimed, believably to be the headquarters of the "Honourable Artillery Company". 

But by then I was in a very Dissenting frame of mind, and I found myself wondering if that really meant they didn't shell to kill - just artillery for sport....