The Quaker Garden Planes

George Fox, who founded the Quakers, was buried on this ground in 1691, and the plane trees standing over it are nowhere near old enough to have seen it. The burial ground took Quaker dead from 1661 until 1855, and the space became a public recreation ground in 1965, laid out inside the Banner Street estate with the trees left in place. Their age is genuinely disputed. Bunhill Fields Quaker Meeting's own account of the garden says the mature London planes here were planted about 1880, which makes them roughly 145 years old. A local record drawing on the London Gardens Trust inventory describes three notable planes, two of which may date from the 18th century, which would make them a century older and among the oldest planes in London. The two claims have not been reconciled, and this page follows the Meeting's own figure because it is the institution's own history, while saying plainly that the bigger claim is out there. It is worth not confusing this with the celebrated burial ground next door. Bunhill Fields holds Blake, Defoe and Bunyan and gets the visitors; the Quaker ground is a separate, quieter square of grass and trees between Banner Street and Chequer Street, six minutes from Old Street. The Amwell Street Fig is about 1.4 kilometres west if you want to make an afternoon of it.