WESLEY’S NEGLECTED GRAVE

Evening Star, Issue 17953, 26 April 1922, Page 9

WESLEY’S NEGLECTED GRAVE

A RENOVATION FUND. Tbo monument over Wesley’s grave is in a state of serious disrepair (says a writer m ‘The Times'). It stamlo a forlorn and_ dci cayin? object in the centre, of the littlo 1 graveyard behind the famous chapel in the I City road. The tuvf in this place of burial ! is meagre and impoverished, and the asphalt ‘ paths are cracked. The monument iteclf, | with its long ineoriptions telling of the lua I ami labors of the evangelist, is blackened with soot. Tho surface of the stonework is scarred and defaced, and the foundations : are falling to piece?. It fe well known that ] the atmosphere of London corrodes certain j kinds of stone. It has bitten deep into the i surface of tho plinth of this memorial and i honeycombed it with ruts and fissures. An--1 other slouo near bv. which was creotca an 1 recently ;u? 1910, already looks a hundred years old. The memory of Wesley deserves sometiling other than this crumbling monument in a decaying wilderness. -Nearly two years a.?o- —in 'day, ld?G —the hirst London District Synod passed the following resolu-tion;-'‘That lids Synod desires to draw the attention of the trustees of Wesleys Chapel to the unkempt condition of Wesley's burial ground, and urgently' requests that an appeal bo made to the Methodist people for funds to put this historic site in a state worthy of ito traditional importance.” A renovation fund has now been opened, and £IO,OOO is aok«l for to defray the cost of repairing the chapel and the churchyard, with its memorials.