The white Georgian houses lining Islington’s leafier streets are well-known for housing some of London’s most famous residents. Boris Johnson, Lily Allen, James McAvoy and Peaches Geldof. The borough could almost support its own issue of
Who’s Who.

But certain permanent celebrity residents do not receive the same attention. Those who reside quietly under Islington’s soil, in the marble tombs and grassy common graves of its cemeteries, have for a long time gone unnoticed.

Bunhill Fields, a four-hectare graveyard between City Road and Bunhill Row, has been used as a burial site since Saxon times. The name derives from ‘Bone Hill’, and, amongst the anonymous bones of thousands of medieval plague victims, lie some of Britain’s most influential historical figures.

The graves of Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, are all to be found at Bunhill. But many residents are unaware of the significance of the site, which was the main burial ground for Dissenters - those who practised Christianity outside the Church of England - until its closure in 1854.

“People don’t really know who’s buried here. They just use it as a short cut to get to work,” says Tom, who has been responsible for the maintenance of the garden for nine years. “They don’t look around them; the graves are just scenery.”

Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the cemetery is an unmarked common grave at 9,77,32 (nine feet down, at coordinates 77 east-west, 32 north-south), where the body of William Blake, Romantic poet, artist and visionary, was buried in 1827. How did the final resting place of one of Britain’s best-loved poets come to be so neglected?

Tim Heath, chairman of the Blake Society, explains: “In 1927, an earlier Blake Society successfully campaigned to have a stone put up in his memory.

“It was a public movement - two thousand people came to the opening ceremony. But in the 1960s, the gravestones were cleared to create a grassy area for City workers, so the stone was moved and hasn’t been replaced.”

Bunhill Fields is classed as a listed building, which means that any change to the cemetery, however small, is a long and difficult process. But Mr Heath believes it is important to identify Blake’s grave, to provide a place for his admirers to pay their respects, and he is heading a new campaign to mark the poet’s resting place.

“He lived in 10 houses across London, all of which have been demolished apart from one - which is now used for Brazilian waxing,” he says. “In addition to a flat stone marking his grave, we would like to inscribe a poem of his into the path that leads through the cemetery, so it’s as if the whole earth is his grave. I think that’s an idea he would have loved.”

But Dr Julie Rugg, of the Cemetery Research group at York University, believes there is an increasing number of people who are interested in visiting cemeteries in the UK. “In Bunhill Fields there is a lot of information about who is buried there,” she says. “Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery is probably the most famous in London, but there is definitely an increase in interest in visiting graves all over London. This is driven especially by people trying to find family members, but also by a more general interest in famous graves.”

Dr Rugg’s view is supported by the director of The Original London Horror Tours, Dr John Pope de Locksley, who claims a blood line to Jack the Ripper and Dracula. “I would definitely say that people are interested in visiting the graves of famous people that they like,” he says. ‘People like hearing about the darker side of London’s history - the Highgate vampire, the ghosts.”

But for Tom the gardener, who always keeps a book about Blake open on his desk, it’s right that Blake’s grave should remain hidden and not form part of a tourist trail. “Blake was an outsider in life; he didn’t court publicity, he just believed in his own work,” he says.

“I think it’s more Blakean that the position of his grave is not well-known, that it’s a bit of a secret. Those who want to find Blake will find him - they don’t need a signpost.”

Photo: Alexa Philips