Description

[003736] [Ticket to the Opening of Bunhill Fields] Bunhill Fields – Admit the Bearer to the Opening Ceremony on Thursday October 14th, 1869. At 3 O’Clock Precisely. London: Pardon and Son, 1869. First Edition. 8vo (Oblong). Unbound. Ticket. Good. Double sided, lithographed ticket for the opening ceremony of Bunhill Fields cemetery, approximately 270mm x 190mm in size

Front with one or two tiny spots of foxing but is generally quite bright and clean, reverse with remnants of glue from once being stuck in an album, with some light discolouring and surface abrasion, but not affecting text

The reverse is a plan of the burial ground, with the location of prominent internees numbered (John Bunyan, Daniel De Foe, Richard Cromwell, Isaac Watts, Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke etc). It is the burial ground of Nonconformists

This ‘opening ceremony’, (it had already been in use for over two hundred years), was to celebrate the development of the site by the City of London. This involved laying out paths, undertaking tree planting and carrying out repair work to the tombs including re-cutting and recording inscriptions

For the printers, Pardon and Sons, see Bigmore and Wyman II:117