The story
As you stand here on City Road, the frantic pulse of London’s financial district is only a few steps away, yet inside these iron railings, the air seems to settle into a heavy, thoughtful silence. You are standing in Bunhill Fields, a place once known as Bone Hill. For centuries, this was the premier cemetery for the Dissenters—those independent thinkers, radicals, and non-conformists who lived outside the laws and liturgy of the Church of England.
Because the ground was never consecrated by a bishop, it became a sanctuary for the souls who challenged the status quo in life and chose to remain apart from it in death. As you wander the paths shaded by ancient London plane trees, you will see monuments that look like a library carved in stone. Over there, under a grand recumbent effigy, lies John Bunyan, who penned The Pilgrim’s Progress while imprisoned for his beliefs.
Not far away stands the towering obelisk of Daniel Defoe, the man who gave us Robinson Crusoe and helped invent the modern novel. These men were the giants of their age, and their monuments reflect their lasting fame. But for a long time, the greatest visionary among them lay in an unmarked patch of grass, his precise location lost to time.
William Blake—the poet, painter, and mystic who saw angels in the trees and wrote the words to the hymn Jerusalem—died in near-poverty in 1827. He was buried here in a common grave, shared with several others, without a headstone to call his own. For generations, visitors would gather at a memorial marker erected in the 1920s, assuming it sat directly above his bones.
They were wrong. It was merely a tribute placed in the general vicinity, a best guess in a field of thousands. The true spot of Blake’s rest remained a secret until 2018.
It took two dedicated researchers, Carol and Luis Garrido, years of meticulous detective work to find him. By comparing ancient, handwritten burial records with modern landscape surveys, they realized Blake’s actual resting place was several yards away in what appeared to be an empty plot. Now, a beautiful new slab of Carrara marble finally marks the exact coordinates where Blake and his wife Catherine lie.
Take a moment to look at the inscriptions. In this small, urban square, you are surrounded by the spirits who shaped the English language and the English imagination. They were the outsiders, the ones who refused to bow, and in the quiet of Bunhill Fields, their voices still resonate.
Whether you are a lover of literature or a seeker of lost history, this ground reminds us that even when the world forgets where a body is laid, a great vision can never truly be buried.