Bunhill Fields Cemetery in London. Authors collection.

Last year we were finally able to embark on a much delayed ‘gap year’ and spent 6 months in the UK where we’d lived in the 80s and 90s. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of ancestors and do lots of research during that time.

In Bunhill Fields lay several of my ancestors, mostly members of the Deacon family who lived in London during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It is a peaceful place criss-crossed by paths and several benches and significant tombs. It is owned and managed by the City of London Corporation, and while it ceased to be a working cemetery in January 1854, after some 123,000 burials, today it is a place of tranquility.¹ There is, however, a darker history to this peaceful place, featuring bones and body-snatchers.

Bones, Plague and Body Snatchers
The name ‘Bunhill’ is thought to derive from ‘Bone Hill’. In 1549 the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral charnel house resulted in over 1000 cartloads of bones being taken to a location just to the north of the city walls where Bunhill Fields now is.² The bones were piled up and covered with soil and were so high that three windmills were built there to make the most of the elevated position. There is also no record of what happened to the hill, some speculate the bones were exhumed and taken elsewhere when the site was levelled.³ In 1665 graveyards rapidly filled up during the Great Plague and Bunhill Fields opened as a burial field under private hands. some confusion exists about whether plague victims were buried there, some historians think it was used for that purpose and others not.²

John Bunyans grave in Bunhill Fields. Authors own collection.

Bunhill’s proximity to St Bart’s hospital also made it a prime spot for one of the most gruesome trades in old London: bodysnatching. Gangs would watch out for funerals, dig up graves during the night, remove the bodies and rebury the coffins. Living London History has an interesting blog about this and details of a ‘Walk in the Footsteps of London’s Body-Snatcher gangs’ which maybe an activity for my next visit to London.⁴ I hope that my ancestors remain at eternal rest somewhere in this area and escaped the clutches of the body snatchers and were not unearthed and sold to anatomists for dissection and research!

There are a couple of frustrating factors for family historians trying to find the headstones of their ancestors. One is that apart from the graves of some prominent people including Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe) and John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim’s Progress), all the remaining headstones remain behind fences. Even though I have burial records for some ancestors, I could not find a list of which headstones were saved and survived landscaping and fencing in the 1950s and 60s. I was also unable to make contact with the Curator to see if this information exists; if anyone has been down this path and been successful, please let me know.

Popular with Nonconformists
Bunhill Fields was never consecrated by the Church of England and because it was not attached to any particular place of worship, it became predominantly a Nonconformist burial ground.  “The terms ‘Nonconformists’ or ‘Dissenters’ were used to refer to Protestants who dissented from Anglicanism – Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists and Unitarians – and also independent groups such as the Quakers, Plymouth Brethren, English Moravians, Churches of Christ, and the Salvation Army. In Scotland, where the established church was Presbyterian, members of other churches, including Anglicans, were considered non-conformists.” ⁵

Book ‘Records of the Deacon Family’ viewed in the British Library, London by author. Written by author’s Cousin Catherine.

Down the rabbit hole of Sandemanianism 
I knew most of my London ancestors were Sandemanians, members of a breakaway Scottish Presbyterian group. Visiting Bunhill Fields and finding out about its history spurred me on to discover more about these London Sandemanians and their lives.

My own ‘family history bible’ was a huge resource:  distant cousin Catherine published “Records of the Family of Deacon of Kettering and London with Notices of Allied Families” in 1899 and it is in this book that I found references to Bunhill Fields burials and mentions of Sandemanians.⁶  A Google search led to an absolute goldmine of information about London Sandemanians in the Wikitree of Trevor Pickup, an excellent family historian, who has been researching for over 20 years. Trevor, himself a direct descendent of one of the last Sandemanians, has put together an extensive collection of information about the main families of the London Sandemanian community, including businesses, homes and connections.⁷ He knew more about that part of my family tree than I did, plus we may also be related! There were many marriages between Sandemanian families and some surprising historical connections.

Trevor lists my earliest Sandemanian ancestor in London as William Deacon, (b 1729 d 1810) who started out in Kettering, Northamptonshire manufacturing woollen stuffs and moved to London where in 1790 he and his wife Hannah became members of the church, with William serving as a Deacon for several years.

The Faraday Connection
William and Hannah’s grandson Thomas Deacon (1792-1858) was born in London and was friends with Michael Faraday and other young men in the Sandemanian Church. Thomas married Ann Fuller and their children married into other Sandemanian families. Michael Faraday was the eminent English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism.  Faraday married Sarah Barnard whom he had known since childhood, they had both grown up in the church. It was surprising to discover that their niece, Mary Barnard, married my 3 x great uncle, William Matheson Deacon. Their graves are in close proximity in the unconsecrated section of Highgate cemetery – another story entirely!

The Sandemanians were an industrious lot, and included bookbinders, publishers, stationers, silversmiths, watchmakers and glass cutters. My own ancestors ran a substantial carrying business, and other areas of family industry included haberdashery, fabric and ‘stuffs’, pens and quills, cabinetmaking, coffee and sugar trading.

Inside title plate of “Records of the Family of Deacon of Kettering and London. With notice of Allied Families” by author Catherine A. Deacon. Published 1899

Cousin Catherine’s book contains interesting observations of Sandemanians:
“The distinguishing features of Sandemanianism are the brotherliness and unity of the community. The first is illustrated by their professing to hold community of goods, ie every member is to consider all that he has in his possession liable to the calls of the poor and the Church. Life insurance and the putting by of money for any future need are forbidden, as coming under the condemnation of ‘laying up treasures upon earth.’  Sandemanianism was a practical protest against the formality, worldliness, and coldness prevailing so largely in the churches of Christ, and it naturally had an attraction for men who, like our ancestors, were of an unworldly and generous spirit. They hold liberal views with regard to amusements, but disapprove of lotteries, cards, dice etc.” ⁶

Cousin Catherine repeated a story associated with Thomas, the son of William and Hannah Deacon. Apparently, his family were about to sit down for dinner when a beggar with children came to the door with a piteous tale, whereupon Thomas took up the leg of mutton from the table and presented it to the beggar, telling his children they could dine off bread and cheese.   Thomas’s household was also run along the lines of severe simplicity of living. His daughters were limited to the simplest and cheapest materials of dress.

I looked for remnants of the Sandemanian Church in London but sadly Bull and Mouth Street in St Martin’s Le Grand, the site of meetings from 1762 until 1785, was demolished in the 1880s.  The next meeting place was in Paul’s Alley, Redcross Street, and according to Cousin Catherine, it was a ‘more commodious building’ with chapel kitchen, waiting and dining rooms.⁶ It too succumbed to urban development.

The Sandemanian church is no longer in existence in London, Trevor Pickup advised that the congregation dwindled to 13 members and one elder in 1982 and closed soon afterwards. 

1 London Metropolitan Archives Collection Catalogue
2 Living London History
3 https://archives.history.ac.uk/cmh/epiharding.html Vanessa Harding, Burial of the plague dead in early modern London
4 https://livinglondonhistory.com/– November 25/2020
5 https://www.britannica.com/
6  Records of the Family of Deacon of Kettering and London with notices of Allied Families, compiled by Catherine A Deacon, Mitchell and Hughes, 140 Wardour Street, London 1899
7 Wikitree.com:  Trevor Pickup, Nonconformists in London, Sandemanians