Quaker Gardens, Islington

Quaker Gardens

View of Quaker Gardens. The brick building in the background is the former caretaker's house of the Bunhill Memorial Buildings (1881), now a Quaker meeting house.
Details
Established	1661
Location	London Borough of Islington
Country	England
Type	Public (closed)
Owned by	London Borough of Islington
No. of graves	12,000

Quaker Gardens is a small public garden in the extreme south of the London Borough of Islington, close to the boundary with the City of London, in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. It is managed by Islington Borough Council. It comprises the surviving fragment of a former burying ground for Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends), in use from 1661 to 1855. George Fox (d. 1691), one of the founders of the movement, was among those buried here.

The gardens lie to the west of Bunhill Row, to the south of Banner Street, and to the north of Chequer Street, and can be entered from either Banner Street or Chequer Street. In addition to the public garden, the site includes a children's playground and a tarmac ball court with basketball hoops. A Quaker meeting house, the last remaining part of the former Bunhill Memorial Buildings, stands at the north-west corner of the gardens.

The site lies in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. The name derives from "Bone Hill", which is possibly a reference to the district having been used for occasional burials from at least Saxon times, but more probably alludes to the use of the fields as a place of deposit for human bones – amounting to over 1,000 cartloads – brought from St Paul's Cathedral charnel house in 1549 when that building was demolished.

In 1661 the London Quakers purchased a plot of land here of 30 square yards for £270 for use as a burial ground: it constituted the first freehold property owned by Quakers in London. This was four years earlier than the opening of the nearby "Dissenters'" burial ground, on the other side of Bunhill Row, which is still known as Bunhill Fields. As well as burials arising from routine deaths, the bodies of 1,177 Quakers who died in the Great Plague of 1665–6 were buried here. The ground was soon full, but additional plots of land were purchased to extend it, until by c.1845 about £3,600 had been invested in the site. The ground was closed for burials in 1855, by which date around 12,000 burials had taken place.