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Daniel Defoe's original tombstone is now on display in Stoke Newington Library, but for 60 years it stood in the front garden of 56 Portswood Road. This was the original tombstone placed on Defoe's grave in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, Finsbury in 1731. It was replaced in 1870 by an obelisk designed by Samuel Horner, stonemason of Bournemouth. Horner took the original tombstone back to Bournemouth and it eventually found its way to Portswood. It was returned to Stoke Newington in 1945.

Tombstone of Daniel Defoe

Photograph, 1941

Newspaper clippings:

Defoe's Tombstone Stood in Portswood Garden, and other correspondence - (Southern Evening Echo 23/07/1982, Southern Daily Echo 31/05/1945, 19/06/1943, 17/06/1943 and 30/06/1943)

Further reading:

‘A. G. K. Leonard tells how Daniel Defoe’s Tombstone Stood for Sixty Years in a Southampton Garden’, by A. G. K. Leonard in Hampshire, volume 40, number 5 March 2000, p44. (H/y)

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