This weekend is Newtown Festival; for over 30 years this festival has been staged in the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, a beautiful green oasis in the middle of the crowded inner west suburb of Newtown.
How did the suburb manage to save such a large area for a park when there is so much pressure for housing?
Well in a way there is quite a large population already living there, because the rest park is the resting place for almost 18,000 souls (17,962 actually).
In 1848, in response to a need for additional burial space and sick of waiting for Government to allocate some, the Anglican Church established a private company, the Sydney Church of England Cemetery Company. This company acquired about 12 acres of land in Newtown, bounded by Church, Federation, Lennox and Australia Streets and opened a new burial ground.
The first internment came soon after with a number of rules and regulations to maintain a standard. Inscriptions and headstones had to be approved, wooden surrounds would be removed if not kept in repair and only wooden coffins were permitted in common graves but no monumentation was allowed. If you could afford a headstone you could afford to pay for a grave site.
The cemetery was laid out to the latest cemetery design fashion from England, with winding pathways and plantings. A small lodge was built near the gate for the cemetery office and a church was planned.
The cemetery attracted both the rich and the poor. Many famous colonial Sydneysiders are buried in the grounds, from Sir Thomas Mitchell the Surveyor General, to the Tooth Family and the Macleays. Others are almost famous such as Eliza Donnithorne, once thought to be the inspiration for Charles Dickens Mrs Havisham. The recovered bodies of Sydney’s worst maritime disaster, the wreck of the Dunbar were interned here. Their funeral procession moved through the streets of Sydney in seven horse drawn hearses, flanked by mounted police and watched by thousands.
But the place was also for the poor. Communal graves for paupers were located in the north west corner fronting Federation Road. These graves were often left open over several days to allow them to be filled before closure.
By 1867, just 18 years after opening, the cemetery was just about full. An average of 1100 burials had taken place each year, or about 21 every week. By the mid 1860s the problems of bodies close to the surface, open graves and seeping water saw a growing agitation for its closure.
Neighbouring businesses complained of maggots and blowflies coming from the cemetery. After heavy rain, the ground appeared to disgorge maggots-a stark reminder of the mortality humans and the corruption that followed death and an indication of the shallow depth of some of the graves. On cold mornings a sickly damp mist hung just above the ground, while on hot summer days you could barely walk past it without a cloth over the mouth and nose.
In January 1868 burials ceased at Camperdown, save for those who already had plots. At the same time the Company was wound up and the cemetery passed to a trust.
In 1871 a grand new church was built inside the grounds. Designed by Edmund Blacket, the Gothic Revival sandstone St Stephens church is considered one of Sydney’s finest. Placed close to the entry gates, the Church suited the site well and has the appearance of having always been there.
With no further burials after the early years of the twentieth century, pressure soon came to bear on the land. Twelve acres in an overcrowded suburb was a tempting prospect. The trustees pushed back, starting a remembrance week for relatives, publishing histories of the cemetery and its famous residents and undertaking restorations of some of the graves. However increasingly, newspapers described the site as overgrown, drab, melancholy and a wilderness.
However it was another tragedy that caused its demise. In June 1946, the brutal murder of 11 year old Joan Ginn in the cemetery shocked Sydney. Lying undiscovered in the overgrown cemetery for days after her death, Joan’s plight lead to the resumption of the cemetery by the Government.
Of the 12 acres, four were enclosed in a high sandstone wall. Grave markers and headstones from the remainder were removed and placed around the walls inside the wall or taken away. Those families that could afford to move their relatives did so, but most were left where they lay. The cemetery was transformed into a park, Camperdown Park and the long term residents remain, just under the ground.
So tread lightly at the Festival, lest you wake them.
March 14, 2013 at 8:03 am
Was here from NZ reading the 2 Boulton Headstones would like to find Henry Boulton who died in 1855 Claire
April 11, 2013 at 12:02 pm
Hi Claire, i don’t know where he might be, but someone out there might. Anybody?
July 20, 2013 at 12:50 pm
The Births/Deaths/Marriages website lists:
V1855228 43A/1855 BOULTON HENRY AGE 47
You can order the certificate online:
http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/bdm_fh/bdm_bdsch.html
July 26, 2013 at 10:39 am
Hi Claire
we have a wonderful page on facebook: Unlocking the Past – Aussie help for all genealogy. I am sure if you join, then post your request, one of us can help you. I have an ancestor who was supposed to be buried there, but I have yet to find her.
Good Luck with your search
Bet Knight
March 25, 2013 at 11:01 am
Last Friday I visited the Camperdown Cemetery, looking for any evidence of an ancestor………… I am so very sad to see the condition it is in, I have since commented to my friends who, like me, are avid family historians, I cannot believe my fellow countryman allows this devastion the the ancestors who built this country…tell me how I can help, please
March 26, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Bet, Camperdown Cemetery has looked better in its day, as have many other cemeteries in Sydney. While the graves are suffering in many cases, through neglect or vandalism, the overgrown nature of the site is deliberate. The cemetery is actually a sanctuary for native plants and grasses that were once common in the area, but now only grow in the cemetery yard. There is a friends group for the cemetery. They are run in conjunction with Marrickville Council. You can contact them via this link. http://www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/action/NOTEMPLATE?s=0,pURL=camperdown_cemetery,
March 27, 2013 at 9:54 am
Thank you very much for your reply, I had no idea of the reasons for the overgrown nature of the cemetery. I found it very hard to walk around and stumbled while looking for graves.of my ancestors.
I can fully appreciate the sanctury now that i understand.
I think i was more concerned that this cemetery was being neglected and like many others, would eventually become another housing estate.
Can I ask, where the records for the cemetery can be located, please.
Thanking you
Bet Knight