John Baskerville - The famous printer who was buried standing up in his Birmingham back garden

Baskerville House, once the home of John Baskerville, a notable printer from the 1700s in Birmingham, stands as a testament to his legacy. 

He is important for several reasons, but primarily because he published the typeface Baskerville.

At that time, much of the printed matter was written in swirly scripted writing. John Baskerville, along with pen nibs are credited with spreading literacy around the world.

While that might sound quite dry, his life became incredibly more interesting after his death.

As an atheist, Baskerville decreed in his will that he didn't want to be buried in a Church of England graveyard. Consequently, he was buried standing upright in his own garden, where Baskerville House stands today.

This arrangement lasted for the first 50 years until a decision was made to construct a canal system through Birmingham.

During canal excavations, Baskerville's body was discovered. It was moved to Digbeth and placed either within the church crypt or, more likely given his atheism, in a warehouse cellar.

The River Rea, which runs through Digbeth, tends to flood twice a year. During one such flood, the river washed his body out of the cellar, down the river towards where Spaghetti Junction is today.

The body was eventually retrieved and brought back to Birmingham.

What happened next was astonishing. Baskerville's body was displayed in a shop window on New Street, where people could go in and see it.

They even produced souvenirs—little squares of the bandages he was wrapped in—that could be purchased and taken away as a memento mori.

Eventually, the shop closed and, still unsure what to do with his body, they, against his wishes, took him to Key Hill Cemetery in the Jewellery Quarter, where he was buried next to the chapel.

One might think that this would be the end of his story, but Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War.

A bomb destroyed the chapel in Warstone Lane Cemetery, and another bomb landed on John Baskerville’s grave. As a result, his exact resting place within the Jewellery Quarter remains uncertain, but it is known that he is spread all over Warstone Lane Cemetery.

This is yet another example of the rich and unusual history that Birmingham has to offer.