The Bunhill Fields area is a stretch of land near Old Street station, northeast of the City of London. Bounded by Featherstone Street to the north, Bunhill Row to the west, City Road to the east, and by Chiswell Street to the south, this area is dominated by Bunhill Fields Burial Ground. There are some shops facing City Road, including food stores like Curry Leaf East and The Sichuan, but also some small investment companies and branches of less well- known banks and investment companies such as PIMFA, Bank Indonesia, and Bank of Baroda. Most of the buildings in this area were constructed during the post-war period, although the Honourable Artillery Company building represents an extraordinary piece of Stuart architecture.

The Honourable Artillery Company is the oldest regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior unit of the Territorial Army. The Company has been active since 1537, and has been involved in numerous wars – including activities on both sides of the English Civil War, the Napoleonic wars, horse artillery in the First World War, and an anti-aircraft regiment during the Second World War. The HAC lost over 700 men during World War II. Today, the Regiment deploys patrols to the front lines of battles in order to gather intelligence and identify targets for long-range weapons.

It has recently served in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Among the HAC’s most well-known members is Lieutenant (Acting Captain) Thomas Tanatt Pryce, who joined the company’s First Battalion at the beginning of World War I, in 1914. He was commissioned into the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1915, but he did not live to see the end of the war - Pryce died in 1918, when he and 40 other men held an enemy battalion for ten hours. He was last seen engaged in hand-to-hand combat with ‘overwhelming numbers of the enemy,’ and he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Bunhill Fields is a Grade-I park, which lies quietly in the middle of the Bunhill Fields area. It was founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists, radicals and dissenters. Those buried in Bunhill Fields include Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe, poet William Blake, and John Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim’s Progress - one of the most-translated books of all time). By the 19th century, the cemetery had become a place of pilgrimage for radical reformers. Although it is only four acres large, at least 120,000 people had been buried in the cemetery by the time it was declared full in 1853.

This area offers close proximity to the City, with several banks along the main road, as well as easy access to the more relaxed parts of central London, such as Old Street and Shoreditch. The popular club XOYO is nearby, but the area is removed from most of the local cafes and night restaurants, meaning that it isn’t particularly busy during the 3AM rush home. Development is common in the north of this postcode, towards Old Street where the old Trans World House building was recently demolished to make way for the White Collar Factory Office building. Slightly further south, plans are underway to construct new residential accommodation in the Bunhill Row development, which will contain 65 new homes.