St Dunstan's Monuments

Robert Clarke, who died 1610 and Frances, his daughter have a memorial at St Dunstans.

Elizabeth Startute who died in 1620 has a monument in St Dunstan's church. Elizabeth was the mother in law of Michael Merriall, a 1620 vestryman, who had her memorial erected. The inscription reads:

'In memory of Elizabeth, widow of Richard Startute, citizen and fishmonger of London, who had issue by him of 3 sons and four daughters. After 16 years spent with him remaining 34 years his widow: In Life and Death a constant example of true vertue and sweetly slept in the Lord, Dec. 5, 1620. Aetat. suae 74.'

Below this are the figures of Michael and his wife and the inscription: 'Captain Michael Merriall & Clare, his wife, eldest daughter of the abovenamed Elizabeth Startute, erected this monument as a testimony of hir virtu & their love. This life is a wareart. Lord Jesus, come quickly. Rev. 20.

The Merriall Monument

In 1756 the Detheck, Startute and Merriall monuments and some others required work to be done of them either to make repairs to part that had fallen or to prevent further damage.

A gravestone once stood in St Dunstan's churchyard dated 1683 with the epitaph: 'Whoever treadeth in this stone I pray you tread most neatly; For underneath the same doth lie Your honest friend Will Wheatley.'

In The Spectator Richard Steele some years later was to remark 'I have made a discovery of a churchyard in which I believe you might spend and afternoon with great pleasure to yourself and to the public. It belongs to the church of Stebon Heath commonly called Stepney. Whether or no it be that the people of that parish have a particular genius for an epitaph, or that there be some poet among them who undertakes that work by the great, I cannot tell; but there are more remarkable inscriptions in that place than in any other I have met with.' Many of the gravestones, alas, are now no longer in place.

Captain Nathaniel Owen's young wife died on 6 August 1685 aged 36 and she appears with her husband and his second wife on a memorial stone inside St Dunstan's church.

Amongst those buried here are Admiral Sir John Leake (1656-1720 - the reliever of Londonderry), Lady Jane Detheck,(1606) wife of Alexander Neville, John Berry (1689-90), and Benjamin Kenton (1800).