The Dissenters' Burial Ground

Roman legionaries rattle their weapons, the Vikings come to pillage and rape, and Tudor ladies display their finery. These are the staple ingredients of an Exeter pageant.

For more recent times, the splendidly nostalgic articles of Geoff Worrall remind us of a 20thC which is fast slipping away. Somewhere in between we seem to have lost the 18thC and the beginning of the 19thC. Yet it was in those years that much of Exeter's present character was formed and the foundations laid, not without struggle, of our civil and religious liberties.

Foremost in the movement for religious toleration were the dissenters. They were a varied lot - Presbyterians, Unitarians, Independents (later Congregationalists) Baptists, Quakers and later the Methodists. They dissented from the domination of the established church. A consequence of that was their exclusion from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Exclusion from higher education directed their energies away from the professions and towards trade and industry, all of which was to the great advantage of the nation's economy. Religious freedom required political reform, the widening of the franchise and the opening up of the closed Chambers that dispensed local government through the guildhalls.

Prominent in Exeter's Dissenting history were the Unitarians but they were the first to disappear. This vanished community has left two significant memorials: the splendid Unitarian George's Meeting House in South Street and the now sadly neglected Dissenters' Burial Ground on the corner of Magdalen Street and Bull Meadow Road. Even in death they were excluded from the established burial grounds within the city walls.

The land for the burial ground was acquired from the Exeter Municipal Charities on a 999-year lease in 1747. So long as George's Meeting House remained open the burial ground was well maintained. Of a total of 1102 burials, a list of some of the city's most influential merchant names would include some who were laid to rest in the burial ground.

The burial ground lost its importance as many Dissenters were interred in the Dissenters section of Lower Cemetery, or Dissenting families moved towards the established church during the 19thC.The closure of the Meeting House was followed by the neglect of the site and its eventual sale to the present owners, Messrs Carkeek Builders.

The present shameful state of the burial ground has now become, very late in the day, a matter of public concern. The Dissenting contribution to public life was, of course, not unique to Exeter. It flourished under the Unitarian and civic reform-minded Chamberlains in Birmingham. The City of London maintains Bunhill Fields where we find the Cromwell family and many others who rocked the establishment in their time.

Exeter's Dissenting Burial Ground contains the tomb of the Kingdon family. It was Samuel Kingdon, the ironmonger, who with three other Unitarians found themselves elected to the Guildhall in 1835 in Exeter's first free and open civic election. Samuel Kingdon Sr, father of the famous 'Iron Sam' was buried there in 1797. The inscription on his tomb read "Beneath this monument are deposited the remains of Mr Samuel Kingdon of this City who died Oct 30th 1797 aged 52. Also his wife Mrs Jane Kingdon who died March 8th 1816 aged 69." Others buried there include members of the Kennaways, Bowings, Treadwins, Merivales, and Bowrings. The last burial took place in the 1850s. They deserve to be remembered. Or are there those who would rather forget them?

In 2010 the burial ground was sold to Nick Sprague for £20,500 with the intention of building 17 one and two bedroom social housing flats. He stated that he would exhume the remains from the site, cremate and bury them on a suitable piece of ground, marked with the Kingdon obelisk, and a suitable inscription. Despite the misgivings of some, the scheme gained the backing of the Western Union of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

Originally published in the Flying Post and reproduced with permission and updated by David Cornforth