Christianity from the 43 bus: 12. Bunhill Fields

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

If you've followed through this blog series you will be starting to understand how many amazing Christian stories litter the 43 bus route.  But one place, opposite John Wesley's house, has so many stories that a long blog series would be needed to tell them.  That place is Bunhill Fields.

For people like me, at least, it contains so many figures whose writings I have come across - but most notably perhaps Isaac Watts (so many hymns), Daniel Defoe (As in Robinson Crusoe etc.) and William Blake (Author of the hymn Jerusalem).  The Wesleys mother Susannah is buried here as well as other worthies like the three Johns: John Owen, John Rippon and John Gill.  The reason for this galaxy of non-conformist names is that this was a convenient burial place just outside the City of London available to non-Anglicans for burial.

The grave that catches the eye - mainly because of its prominent position - is that of John Bunyan.

For someone who spent so much of his life in Bedford gaol - which we have to thank for his unequalled Pilgrim's Progress - this seems an unlikely place to be buried.  A preacher of such brave heroism I felt sure I would discover an amazing story, matching his writings, of how his death came about in London.  Perhaps if I were wiser I would have considered that there is probably a reason why I have never heard a story about Bunyan's actual death.

Anyhow, here it is.  He rode his horse from Reading to London in very heavy (August) rain.  He got soaked.  He fell ill at his friends house as a result.  His cold turned to a fever.  He died.  In summary, he was killed by the British Summer . . .

Christianity from the 43 bus: 11. John's House

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

Across the insanity that is Old Street roundabout, the 43 bus passes the house of John Wesley.  Not of course the only place he lived in his 87 years, but one he built for himself in the grounds of his London Chapel and his home for his final decade or so.

It is the house where he died after an astonishing ministry that echoes across the world still today in the form of Methodism.  In his bedroom here - you can visit it still - he said his final words, "The best of all is, God is with us."

No matter how much we do, the Christian's greatest joy is whose we are.

Christianity from the 43 bus: 10. The Leysian Mission

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

The 43 heads out of the centre of Islington down City Road towards the City of London.  City Road is probably most famous for Moorfield's Eye Hospital, one of the world's major centres for eye surgery.  These days the road is populated with many contemporary high-rise glass buildings, but at its end comes this building.

Looking the part as a rival to Harrods it is an eye-turning place despite being near central London's many grand exteriors.  It was The Leysian Mission.

The Leys School in Cambridge was a Methodist School designed to prepare non-Anglicans to enter degree study at Cambridge University - something only made possible in the 1870s.  Graduates of this elite school set about the improvement of the wretched social needs of London's East End.  Originally deep in the East End, this was the second, grander property, at the very edge of the East End but wielding a wide influence.

The story is even better than the building, but perhaps inevitably it is today apartments.