Editing Bunhill Fields (section)

==Historical background==
[[File:Map of Bunhill Fields City Road London.jpg|thumb|left|Plan of the present Bunhill Fields public gardens (east at the top). Areas in green are fenced, and contain most of the surviving monuments. Areas in yellow and white have been largely cleared of monuments, and are fully accessible to the public.]]

Bunhill Fields was part of the Manor of [[Finsbury]] (originally Fensbury), which has its origins as the [[prebend]] of Halliwell and Finsbury, belonging to [[Old St Paul's Cathedral|St Paul's Cathedral]] and established in 1104. In 1315 the prebendary manor was granted by Archdeacon [[Robert Baldock]] to the Mayor and Commonalty of London. This enabled more general public access to the semi-[[fen]] or moor stretching from the City of London's boundary ([[London Wall]]), to the village of [[Hoxton]].

In 1498 part of the otherwise unenclosed landscape was set aside to form a large field for military exercises of archers and others. This part of the manor has sports and occasional military use: [[Artillery Ground]].

Next to this lies Bunhill Fields. The name derives from "Bone hill", likely linked to occasional burials from at least [[Anglo-Saxons|Saxon]] times, but more probably derives from the use for mass-deposit for human bones—amounting to over 1,000 cartloads—brought from St Paul's [[charnel house]] in 1549 (when that building was demolished).<ref>Holmes 1896, pp. 133–134.</ref> The dried bones were deposited on the moor and capped with a thin layer of soil. This built up a hill across the otherwise damp, flat fens, such that three windmills could safely be erected in a spot that came to be one of the many windmill hills.