Description

635-1/0/10220 BUNHILL FIELDS BURIAL GROUND
21-FEB-11 Monument to James Hughes, East enclosure

GV II
Obelisk monument to James Hughes, late C19

LOCATION: 532771.5, 182253.9

MATERIALS: Red granite with bronze plaque and lettering; sandstone plinth.

DESCRIPTION: The monument takes the form of a tall granite obelisk with a square pedestal and base, resting on a slab plinth. The pedestal bears a Welsh-language text inset in bronze lettering. The shaft of the obelisk bears an oval bronze plaque with a bas-relief portrait of Hughes.

HISTORY: James Hughes, also known as Iago Trichrug (1779-1844) was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, hymn-writer and poet. Born in Cardiganshire and initially trained as a blacksmith, he came to London at the beginning of the C19 and began to preach at the Wilderness Row Chapel in Clerkenwell. He was ordained in 1816, and in 1823 became the founding minister of the new Jewin Crescent Chapel. (The latter is still extant, in rebuilt premises a few streets away from Bunhill Fields.) He also wrote poetry, hymns, Bible commentaries and translations, and engaged in the doctrinal disputes of the time. He was buried at Bunhill Fields in November 1844. His monument was later renewed later in the century.

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).
RMJ Jones, rev. Mari A Williams, entry on Hughes in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com (retrieved on 9 June 2009).
Revd Gomer Morgan Roberts, entry on Hughes in Welsh Biography Online, yba.llgc.org.uk (retrieved on 9 June 2009).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The monument to James Hughes is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It commemorates an important figure in early-C19 Welsh religious life and literature, the founder of a local and still-extant Welsh-language church.
* 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 east enclosure, and especially with that of Hughes's contemporary, countryman and fellow bard Hugh Pugh (q.v.).

Reasons for Listing

Yes, list

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27087472

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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