I know this is rather late, as we’re already 12 days into February, but I still thought it was worth putting this up, for the sake of continuity! (See “My second unusual Christmas present”).

The picture on February’s page on my burial grounds calendar is of part of Bunhill Fields - a very famous Nonconformist cemetery, lying just outside the original City of London, on unconsecrated land. It began life (can a place full of dead people be described as having a life?!) in the mid-17th century with plague burials taking place here (1665), and became the place to be buried if you were a notable Protestant Nonconformist - fashionable even! It finally closed for burials in the middle of the 19th century.

Among those whose remains are interred here are John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, John Owen, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and George Fox.

When doing my dissertation (see the previous moment referred to above) I had to get written permission from the City of London Corporation to go behind the railings to photograph many of the headstones, and I’m sure it amused many passers by to see this young man crouching among the dead, scribbling in a notebook and snapping away with a delighted smile as if discovering hidden treasures.