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In short: For close to fifty years the ground where Central Station now stands was Sydney's main burial ground, known as the Devonshire Street Cemetery or the Sandhills. The first burial took place in September 1819 and the ground was consecrated in January 1820. New burials were banned from 1 January 1867, though families with vaults kept using it for years after. In 1901 the government took the land for a new railway terminus. Relatives had two months to claim their dead. Roughly 8,400 to 8,500 known remains went to other cemeteries, and more than 21,000 others, most of them unnamed, were carried by tram to a new cemetery at Botany. More than a century later, Sydney Metro's archaeologists found the job had never been quite finished.
Thousands of us walk through Central every day without a thought for what used to be under our feet. I wrote about it in 2015 in The Sandhills Cemetery – Devonshire Street Cemetery, where I put up Arthur Foster's old talk on the cemetery, and again in Central Station – From Cemetery to Train Station. This time I wanted the whole story.
The Old Cemetery, Devonshire Street, painted by Julian Ashton in 1894. Julian Ashton, 1894, State Library of New South Wales (ML 207), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Why Sydney Needed a New Burial Ground
The Old Ground on George Street
Sydney's first proper burial ground was on George Street at the corner of Druitt Street, where the Town Hall and St Andrew's Cathedral stand now (see Old Sydney Burial Ground – Town Hall Area and Sydney's First Cemetery). By Governor Macquarie's time it was full, and the Sydney Gazette of 22 January 1820 said "the nature and quality of the ground" had made it "offensive to the inhabitants in the neighbourhood". The Sydney Metro archaeologists, going back through the records, say parts of it had become a rubbish dump, and people were driving pigs, cows and horses into it.
Macquarie had reserved a new site in 1818, well out of town past the cattle and hay markets and beyond the Brickfields, on a range of sandhills at the southern edge of the settlement. Major George Druitt called for tenders for a brick wall four feet six inches high and fourteen inches thick to go around it. In his 1822 report Macquarie listed "a new burial ground at the southern extremity of the town, consisting of four acres of ground surrounded with a brick wall".
Opening the New Ground, 1819–1820
The first burial came before the official opening. Quartermaster Hugh McDonald of the 46th Regiment died on Thursday 9 September 1819, and on Saturday 11 September the Governor and most of the officers in town followed his coffin to "the new burial ground (being the first there)", as he had asked. Even he comes with a puzzle. The Gazette said he was in "the 36th year of his age", but his headstone, as copied by the Herald in 1901, read "aged 30 years".
On 22 January 1820 the Gazette announced that the new ground, "situated at a short distance beyond the Brickfields", would be consecrated on Thursday 27 January after a service at St Phillip's, and that from the 28th all funerals would go there. A week later the Government and General Orders confirmed the consecration and said the old ground had been "closed, barred, and locked".
Where It Was and How It Was Laid Out
Location and Boundaries
The cemetery sat on the high sandy ridge at the top of Brickfield Hill, roughly the block bounded today by Eddy Avenue, Elizabeth Street, Chalmers and Devonshire Streets and the Pitt Street side of Central. Arthur Foster described it as "one of a range of sandhills lying south of the Brickfields", with a valley and a stream between them where Belmore Park and the Haymarket are now (see Brickfield Creek). Its nearest neighbours were Carters' Barracks (1819) and the Benevolent Asylum (1820).
Foster preferred to call it the "Sandhills Cemetery". He thought "Devonshire Street Cemetery" was "somewhat of a misnomer" for the original ground, which faced Belmore Park. Devonshire Street didn't even exist in 1820. A road was formed along the southern boundary in the first half of the 1830s and took that name.
Seven Burial Grounds Side by Side
At first the four acres belonged to the Church of England, though Foster noted that people of every denomination were buried there in the early years. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, the Catholics and Presbyterians were given land in 1825, and over the next fourteen years grants followed for the Jewish community, the Wesleyan Methodists, the Quakers and the Congregationalists (Independents). By 1836 there were seven burial grounds side by side, about twelve acres in the Dictionary of Sydney's figure or eleven acres according to the Sydney Metro report. Even the Jewish ground's start date varies. The Metro report says Jewish burials began in 1820 and the land was promised by Governor Darling in 1830 and formally granted in mid-1835. Wikipedia says the Jewish section was used from 1832.
It wasn't really one cemetery at all. Each church held its own freehold grant, with its own fence, gate and fees. "You could not walk from area to area," as the Dictionary of Sydney puts it. Foster described the Church of England ground at the northern end facing Belmore Park, with "a winding thoroughfare", Belmore Road, running past its iron gateway. A brick wall with stone coping separated it from the Catholic and Presbyterian grounds. Further south were the Friends' Meeting House and its little ground, then the Congregational, Wesleyan and Jewish grounds facing Devonshire Street, opposite the old railway station.
Plans for the Sydney Railway, 1849, showing the land proposed for the railway, part of today's Central, before the first terminus was built. State Records NSW (SR Map 6408), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Rules of 1820
The orders of 29 January 1820 set out how the ground was to be run. Vaults had to be "placed uniformly in line with each other" on one side, and graves had to run "East and West, according to the Order established in the Mother Country". One corner was set apart "for peculiar and special Purposes", which the Dictionary of Sydney suggests probably meant the unbaptised, executed criminals and suicides. Fees were five shillings for the chaplain, two and six for the clerk and two and six for the gravedigger, who was to live in the lodge.
Filling Up and Falling Apart
Full Within Twenty Years
Sydney grew far faster than anyone planned. When the Sydney Monitor took a "Walk Through Sydney" in March 1829, the new ground was "already half filled up", and it had been open only nine years. In November 1839 the eastern wall of the Protestant ground fell down, and when Elizabeth Street was lowered around 1841 the cutting and wall collapsed again. In September 1843 Bishop Broughton said the Church of England ground was so full it was "impossible to find room for more bodies". His answer was a new cemetery at Camperdown, consecrated in January 1849 (see St Stephen's, Camperdown). Families with vaults kept using the Sandhills, though, and the other churches kept burying in their own grounds.
People then believed disease spread through "miasma", the bad air from rotting matter. In 1866 the City Health Officer, Henry Graham, told a select committee that bodies lay "so near the surface that you could just touch them with a walking-stick or umbrella".
Closure in 1867 (and After)
The Sydney Burial Ground Act of 1866 banned burials in the City of Sydney from 1 January 1867. The Necropolis Act of 1867 set aside 200 acres at Haslem's Creek for what became Rookwood. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Botany researchers give its opening as 1868. (See Rookwood Necropolis and Mortuary Station, just down the road from the old cemetery.)
But families could still be buried in existing vaults and family graves under a licence from the Colonial Secretary, and some big names went in after 1867:
- John Hubert Plunkett, the Attorney-General who prosecuted the Myall Creek murderers, died in Melbourne on 9 May 1869. The ADB says he was buried beside Father John Joseph Therry and Archdeacon McEncroe (see John Plunkett – Australian Hero).
- David Jones, the retailer, died on 29 March 1873 and was buried here on 31 March (see David Jones).
- Rev. John Dunmore Lang died on 8 August 1878. After a huge public funeral on 10 August he was buried on "the most elevated portion of the cemetery".
- William Perry, Paddington's first mayor, went into his family vault in the Congregational ground in 1882.
So the closing date depends on who you ask. Museums of History NSW says "the Devonshire Street Cemetery was closed in 1888", and Botany Descendants & Ancestors say that by 1901 it had been "closed for more than twelve years". The Dictionary of Sydney and the Metro archaeologists date it to 1 January 1867. The way I read it, 1867 is when ordinary burials stopped and the late 1880s is when the last vault burials ended.
A Morgue and a Wilderness
Something I didn't know before: in 1880 the government decided to build the South Sydney Morgue in the northern corner of the Anglican ground, facing Garden Road. It opened on 1 October 1881 with a retired police detective, Edward Bloomfield, as keeper. Foster remembered a "veteran caretaker—Edward Broomfield" with a cottage there. The names are close, but I can't prove they were the same man.
Nobody was paying for upkeep, and the place fell apart. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was "thoroughly neglected" by 1878, and parliament was already talking about taking it for the railway in 1882. In October 1900 a member of the Citizens' Vigilance Committee wrote in the Daily Telegraph of "a thick, disorderly, and in some places almost impenetrable scrub", with headstones leaning about "like a party of drunken men crossing a field".
The Devonshire Street Cemetery, from two old photographs in the Dixson Library joined together. Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, merged by Wayne Hill, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Who Was Buried There
Nobody knows exactly how many people were buried in the Sandhills. The State Library's 2019 exhibition "Dead Central" says "well over 30,000". Among them were some of the best-known names in early Sydney.
First Fleeters, Merchants and Printers
Foster found several First Fleeters in the Church of England ground: John Trace (1823), Elisabeth Beckford (1827), William Tyrrill (1827), Frances Mintz (1828), Thomas Prior, who died in 1836 aged 88, and Mary Marshall (1849).
- James Squire, the Kissing Point brewer, died on 16 May 1822 aged 67. His stone said "the hop plant was first cultivated in this settlement, and the first brewery was erected" under his care. The Australian Cemeteries Index records his reinterment at Botany.
- Isaac Nichols, Sydney's first postmaster, died on 8 November 1819 aged 49, one of the first burials in the new ground (see The First Post Office).
- George Howe, the government printer who started the Sydney Gazette, died on 11 May 1821. Foster says he went into the same grave as Edward Wills.
- Simeon Lord, merchant, died in 1840. His family vault is now at the Pioneer Memorial Park.
- Samuel Terry, the "Botany Bay Rothschild", died on 22 February 1838 (see Samuel Terry).
- Mary Reibey, the convict girl who became one of the colony's richest businesswomen and is now on our $20 note, died on 30 May 1855. Foster placed her altar tomb a few paces west of a Norfolk Island pine near Nichols' grave (see Mary Reibey).
Mary Reibey, about 1835. Her tomb was one of those moved to Botany. Unknown artist, c.1835, State Library of New South Wales (MIN 76), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Simeon Lord, ex-convict and merchant, in an undated portrait. His family vault is one of those now in the Pioneer Memorial Park. Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
George Street from the wharf in 1829, showing the town houses of Isaac Nichols and Mary Reibey. Both ended up in the Sandhills. James Wilson Carmichael, 1829, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Explorers, Judges and Clergy
The explorer and Surveyor-General John Oxley (died 1828) was buried here, according to the ADB. So was the botanist Allan Cunningham, in July 1839, along with James Anderson, Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, who died in 1842 and whose obelisk was "cracked from apex to base" by 1901. Judge John Stephen (died 1833) had a square enclosed vault. Foster also mentions the graves of Chief Justices Francis Forbes and Sir James Dowling, and of Robert Wardell, whose grave had a broken fluted column. Commodore Sir James Brisbane of HMS Warspite died on 10 December 1826. The clergy included Rev. Richard Hill of St James' (died 1836) and Rev. William Cowper of St Phillip's (died 1858). Wikipedia's Camperdown Cemetery article says Sir Maurice O'Connell (died 1848) was exhumed from Devonshire Street and reburied at Camperdown.
The 1844 Cunningham obelisk in the Royal Botanic Garden. Allan Cunningham's remains were placed inside it in 1901. Whiteghost.ink, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The botanist Allan Cunningham, buried in the Sandhills in 1839 and moved into his Botanic Garden obelisk in 1901. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The explorer and Surveyor-General John Oxley, who died in 1828 and was buried here. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Irish Exiles and Cora Gooseberry
The Catholic ground held men transported after the Irish rising of 1798, including William Davis and Andrew Byrne. The best known was the Wicklow rebel Michael Dwyer. The ADB says he was first buried at Liverpool in 1825, then moved to Devonshire Street in 1878 by his grandson, Dean John Dwyer of St Mary's. In May 1898 he and his wife were moved again, to Waverley. The vault was opened on 19 May and the funeral to Waverley was on Sunday 22 May. The 1798 memorial over their grave there went up in 1900.
Cora Gooseberry, widow of Bungaree and a familiar figure around town, was found dead on 30 July 1852 at the Sydney Arms Hotel in Castlereagh Street. The ADB says the publican, Edward Borton, paid for her burial in the Presbyterian ground and her headstone. The stone later went to Botany, and Ethel Foster copied its fading epitaph in 1901.
Cora Gooseberry, drawn by W. H. Fernyhough in 1836. W. H. Fernyhough, 1836, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The 1798 memorial at Waverley Cemetery, put up in 1900 over Michael Dwyer and his wife after their move from Devonshire Street. Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Waverley Cemetery on the cliffs at Bronte, where many families took their dead in 1901. DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What the Headstones Said
The Herald printed a long list of inscriptions in February 1901, and they show how hard life was in the young colony:
- The oldest stone, near the Garden Road gates, was for William Chapman, plumber and glazier, who died on 15 June 1810 and left a "disconsolate widow with 9 children".
- Four seamen of HM sloop Bathurst drowned when their boat overturned on 18 August 1822. Their stone was put up by a lieutenant who had been in the boat with them.
- Constable Joseph Haynes was killed on duty in 1824. Samuel Lepton's 1825 stone named "the wicked Byron who shot me".
- John Ward was "accidentally shot on Christmas morning, A.D. 1830".
- A stone sarcophagus held the remains of 17 people from the barque Charles Eaton, wrecked in Torres Strait in 1834. Their bones were recovered from the island of Aureed and buried here on 17 November 1836.
- One huge stone said only "Alas! Poor William Templeton, who died March 10, 1838, aged 23 years".
Foster found one more surprise. When the slab of Anthony Fenn Kemp junior (died 1824) was lifted for the move to La Perouse, the underside carried the inscription of Judge-Advocate Ellis Bent. Foster also wrote that Captain John Putland, Governor Bligh's son-in-law who died in 1808, had his lead coffin moved here from old St Phillip's and was "now at La Perouse". Wikipedia's Camperdown article says his headstone went to Camperdown in the 1850s. I can't tell which is right, so you get both.
The Railway Comes
A Terminus Next Door
The railway had been on the cemetery's doorstep for decades. Sydney's first terminus opened on 26 September 1855 just south of Devonshire Street, at the spot people unofficially called Redfern. By the 1890s it was far too small. Norman Selfe's 1894 scheme for bringing the line further in included a drawing of the Sand Hills burying grounds. In 1899 the Public Works Committee weighed up Hyde Park against the Devonshire Street cemeteries and chose the cemeteries as the cheaper and less controversial option (see Central Station and Eddy Avenue).
Norman Selfe's 1894 drawing of the Sand Hills Burying Grounds, made for his railway scheme. Norman Selfe, 1894, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sydney's first railway terminus, opened in 1855 just south of Devonshire Street, photographed in 1871. NSW State Archives and Records, 1871, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The second terminus, John Whitton's 1874 station, around 1879. It sat right across Devonshire Street from the cemetery. NSW State Archives and Records, c.1879, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Act of December 1900
The Secretary for Works, E. W. O'Sullivan, brought in the City Railway Extension (Devonshire Street) Bill on 3 December 1900. John Norton asked the House to show "some little reverence for the dead", and Mr Young pointed out that the bill said nothing about removing the remains or headstones. It turned out the government hadn't realised each burial ground was a freehold grant held by its church. The £140,000 set aside for resumptions only covered buildings: the Police Barracks, Benevolent Asylum, Christ Church parsonage, Female Refuge, Good Samaritan convent, tram depot, morgue and Friends' Meeting House. The Metro report says the bill became law on 11 December 1900. The same day the Herald ran a letter from Curwen Campbell demanding compensation for plot owners. A separate Devonshire-street Cemetery Act followed in 1901, and Museums of History NSW holds a copy dated 17 October 1901.
The extension of the railway terminus onto the Devonshire Street Cemetery, as recommended by the Public Works Committee in 1900. State Records NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
A Tyrrell Collection glass plate catalogued as "Approach to Central Railway, 1900". Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Another Tyrrell glass plate, catalogued as "Central Railway Station, 1900". It shows the old terminus the new station was built to replace. Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Two Months to Claim Your Dead
The official notice, dated 17 January 1901 and signed by Robert Hickson of Public Works, gave relatives two months to apply to move their family's remains and headstones to a cemetery of their choice, at the government's reasonable expense. The unclaimed would be reburied at Rookwood. The other cemetery trustees weren't keen on taking thousands of unclaimed bodies, so on 20 February the government announced Botany instead, and its notices spoke of "creating a new cemetery at near La Perouse, in a beautiful position". That became Bunnerong, beside Botany Cemetery.
A board chaired by Harold F. Norrie ran the job. The Herald of 2 February 1901 said most early removals were going to Waverley, fees were capped at Necropolis rates, and men were guarding the graves "from interference by marauders or larrikins". Surveyors numbered the monuments in each ground: 1,229 in the Church of England ground, 1,451 Catholic, 1,006 Presbyterian, 318 Congregational, 256 Wesleyan and 268 Jewish. By 20 March O'Sullivan said there had been "some 1500 applications" but only about 300 exhumations, and family removals carried on until the end of May.
Clearing the Cemetery in 1901
Trenches, Sieves and a Tramway to Botany
The unclaimed dead were a much bigger job. On 16 April 1901 work started on a tramway from Devonshire Street into the Wesleyan and Congregational grounds. A second line ran from the tram depot to the base of the Anglican sandhill, roughly along today's Eddy Avenue. Surplus steam trams hauled the coffins out along the Botany line to the new cemetery, and by the end of June it was all running.
The ground was dug in trenches, the soil went through a sieve, and the bones went into new coffins, often several people to a coffin. A writer calling himself "Tackra" visited for the Evening News in July 1901. He saw ground like "a choppy sea of yellow and grey earth", men "about shoulder deep amongst the hummocks of clay", and a shed with "piles of coffins neatly placed in rows from floor to ceiling", marked "No. 133, Pres." or "1140 Wes.". His piece, "Nobody's Friends", ends with a line that stays with you: "Good-bye — good night — forgotten dead of long ago."
The Presbyterian ground was done by mid-August, then the Congregational and Catholic, and last the Church of England ground on the Belmore Park side. Work finished in early October 1901. The walls came down and the sandhills were carted away. The Public Works Department said about 80,000 cubic yards of sand went to build up Belmore Park.
Not everyone believed it had been done properly. In September Truth said "not a bone" would be left, but on 20 October it ran "The Cemeteries Scandal", claiming that only the Anglican and Jewish sections had been trenched to nine feet and the rest to barely four. As we'll see, Truth had a point.
The Devonshire Street Cemetery in a State Records photograph dated 1902. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Surveyor George Melrose at work in the Devonshire Street cemetery around the end of 1900, getting ready for the new station. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How Many, and Where They Went
The figures depend on which report you read:
- Claimed by families: Botany Descendants & Ancestors counts 1,568 applications covering 8,460 known remains moved to other cemeteries. The Board's report, quoted in the Daily Telegraph in 1904 and cited by the Metro archaeologists, says 1,568 applications were approved for £16,856, covering 13,766 sets of remains, with 158 later withdrawn, and about 8,400 known sets went elsewhere. The Dictionary of Sydney says about 8,500.
- Sent to Botany: A return of 7 November 1902 lists 4,762 coffins holding 5,366 known remains and an estimated 16,330 unknown, reckoned at about ten sets of bones to a coffin.
- Total: Adding it up, Botany Descendants & Ancestors gets about 30,156. The Dictionary of Sydney and the ABC say about 30,000 unclaimed remains went to La Perouse.
- Headstones: About 4,500 monuments survived in 1901, and about 2,800 were re-erected on 25 acres beside Bunnerong Road.
- Cost: £26,890 for exhumation and £22,541 for reburial at Bunnerong. The Board wound up in September 1902.
Practically every Sydney cemetery took some: Rookwood, Waverley, Gore Hill, St Thomas' at Crows Nest, Balmain, Randwick, St Jude's, the Field of Mars, South Head and Woronora, but very few to Camperdown. Some went further, to Sandgate, Berkeley near Unanderra, Goulburn, Cootamundra and Kincumber. David Jones and his 1865 monument went to Rookwood. Hugh McDonald, the first burial, went with his wife Mary to the Coulson tomb at St Jude's, Randwick, though the Dictionary of Sydney says his headstone was broken. If you think an ancestor was here, the register of remains (NRS 15513) is held by Museums of History NSW, and they have an online index.
Building Central Station at the Devonshire Street end, around 1902. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
St Jude's churchyard at Randwick, where Hugh McDonald, the cemetery's first burial, was moved in 1901. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Central Station Rises
The foundation stone of the new station was laid on 30 April 1902 at the corner of Pitt Street and the new Belmore Road. Walter Liberty Vernon's sandstone terminus opened officially on 4 August 1906, and the first passengers came through the next day. The clock tower followed in 1921. Old Devonshire Street vanished under the railway yards, surviving as the pedestrian tunnel under the platforms.
The approach road to the new Central Station, by 1906. State Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The lower levels of Central under construction, dated 3 April 1903 on Commons. Unknown photographer, 1903, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A State Archives photograph catalogued as the laying of the foundation stone and dated 26 September 1903. The official report gives 30 April 1902 (see Where the Sources Disagree). NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The new viaducts into Central around 1906. NSW State Archives and Records (via Flickr), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Breaking through the old platforms so the new station could open, about 1906. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The first train leaving the new Central Station in 1906. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Bunnerong and the Pioneer Memorial Park
For about seventy years the headstones stood in rows at Bunnerong near Botany Bay (see Botany Bay), and slowly they fell apart. Between 1969 and 1971, 2,285 of the stones there were transcribed, and Johnson and Sainty published the inscriptions in 1973. Bunnerong was incorporated into Botany Cemetery in 1972, and only 746 stones were kept, gathered together in the Pioneer Memorial Park. They include the Lord family vault, Mary Reibey, John Cadman, George Howe, Robert Watson and Ellis Bent. The park's start date varies. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1973 in one place and 1974 in another, Randwick City Council's plaque says "Established 1974", and Monument Australia and the Cape Banks Family History Society say the Botany Cemetery trustees, led by Fred W. Read, created it in 1976. Botany Cemetery is now part of the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park at Matraville.
Devonshire Street headstones in the Pioneer Memorial Park at Botany Cemetery, with newer graves beside them, 2010. Cemeterycare, 2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The dedication plaque at the Pioneer Memorial Park, Botany Cemetery. Cemeterycare, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Found Again: The Sydney Metro Excavations
When Sydney Metro dug its new platforms under Central, the archaeologists went looking for graves left behind in 1901. Between November 2018 and December 2021 they found 74 graves and four burial vaults, the first mapping of individual graves there since the 1840s. So Truth's 1901 complaint wasn't far off the mark. Most of the graves ran east–west, as the 1820 orders required, but 24 ran north–south and five ran north-east to south-west. In 2019 the ABC reported the story of Joseph Thompson, whose coffin nameplate read "Joseph Thompson died July 1858 aged 80 years". The records said he had been moved to La Perouse in 1901, but there he was. He was a linen draper born at Daventry, Northamptonshire, in 1779, and a deacon of the Pitt Street Independent chapel. The ABC said he arrived in 1855, while the Metro report, drawing on family research, gives 30 April 1834. He was reburied at the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park on 26 November 2021.
They also found the Perry and Ham family vault in the Congregational ground, where William Perry, Paddington's first mayor, had been buried in 1882. His daughter Mary Hay Kilby had the vault's occupants moved to the Field of Mars on 22 March 1901, yet remains were still there. They were reburied in the Ham and Perry vault at the Field of Mars on 4 November 2022. Other identified remains were reburied as families wished and the unidentified at the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park. The dig also turned up NSW's first railway turntable, a 40-foot one from the 1855 station.
Central Station Today
Central is now Australia's biggest and busiest station. Wikipedia puts it at 85.4 million passenger movements in 2018, and more than 250,000 people a day. It went on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
The clock tower at the north-western corner, 85.6 metres tall, opened on 12 March 1921. Its clock was designed by Richard Lamb and Alfred Fairfax of Fairfax & Roberts.
Central's 1921 clock tower at dusk, standing roughly where the northern end of the Church of England ground used to be. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Central in its early years, before 1955. Unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Grand Concourse in 2024. JustARandomEditor123, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Devonshire Street Tunnel opened in 1906 as a footpath carrying the line of old Devonshire Street under the railway, and it cuts straight through the old cemetery ground. It was done up with terrazzo panels and extended 80 metres west under Railway Square in the early 1970s, and the train murals went up in 1985. These days it runs about 300 metres from Chalmers Street in Surry Hills to Railway Square.
The Devonshire Street entrance to Central, in an undated State Archives photograph. NSW State Archives and Records, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Devonshire Street Tunnel in the 1970s. City of Sydney, 1970s, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The tunnel in September 2020. Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Sydney Metro work that turned up the forgotten graves also gave Central its newest platforms. Construction started in 2018 under Platforms 13 and 14. The Central Walk concourse fully opened in April 2023, and the metro platforms opened on 19 August 2024. Their escalators, 45 metres long, are the longest in the southern hemisphere.
The metro platforms at Central in December 2024, dug through ground where the archaeologists found the 74 graves. JustARandomEditor123, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Timeline
- 1818 – Macquarie reserves the Brickfield Hill site.
- 11 September 1819 – First burial, Quartermaster Hugh McDonald.
- 27 January 1820 – Consecration. All funerals go there from the 28th.
- 1825–1830s – Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Wesleyan, Quaker and Congregational grounds added. Seven grounds by 1836.
- 1843 – Bishop Broughton says the Anglican ground is full.
- 26 September 1855 – First railway terminus opens just south of Devonshire Street.
- 1 January 1867 – New burials banned. Licensed vault burials carry on.
- 11 December 1900 – Railway extension bill becomes law.
- 17 January 1901 – Notice to relatives, two months to claim.
- April–October 1901 – Tramway built, ground trenched and cleared.
- 30 April 1902 – Foundation stone of the new station.
- 4 August 1906 – Central Station officially opens.
- 1970s – Bunnerong stones reduced to the Pioneer Memorial Park.
- 2018–2021 – Sydney Metro archaeologists find 74 graves and four vaults.
Seeing It Today
There isn't a headstone left at Central, but you can still follow the cemetery around Sydney:
- Central Station and the Devonshire Street tunnel. Stand at the Elizabeth Street side of the station and you're on the old cemetery ground. Walk through the tunnel and you're on the line of old Devonshire Street.
- Belmore Park, partly built up with cemetery sand.
- Pioneer Memorial Park, Botany Cemetery (Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, Matraville). The biggest collection of Devonshire Street headstones.
- The Cunningham Obelisk in the Royal Botanic Garden. Allan Cunningham's remains were placed inside it on 26 June 1901, in the obelisk his admirers had put up in 1844.
- Waverley Cemetery. Michael Dwyer's 1798 memorial.
- Rookwood. The David Jones family monument, among many others (see Rookwood Cemetery & Necropolis and Rookwood Cemetery).
- St Jude's, Randwick and the Field of Mars, Ryde, where the McDonalds and the Perry/Ham family ended up.
- Mortuary Station in Chippendale, and the Shakespeare Hotel (1879) on the surviving bit of Devonshire Street in Surry Hills.
- In the archives. Ethel Foster's glass negatives of the headstones are in the Mitchell Library, and the Museums of History NSW index lists where people went.
Next time you're rushing for a train at Central, spare a thought for the 30,000 or so people who were buried under your feet.
Belmore Park at dusk. It was raised with spoil from the station works. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Mortuary Station at Chippendale, just down the road from the old cemetery. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Where the Sources Disagree
- Hugh McDonald's age. The Sydney Gazette said he was in "the 36th year of his age", but his headstone, as copied by the Herald in 1901, read "aged 30 years".
- When the Jewish ground started. The Sydney Metro report says Jewish burials began in 1820, the land was promised in 1830 and it was granted in 1835. Wikipedia says 1832.
- Its size. The Dictionary of Sydney says about twelve acres and the Sydney Metro report says eleven.
- When it closed. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Metro archaeologists say 1 January 1867. Museums of History NSW says 1888.
- Captain Putland's headstone. Foster says it went to La Perouse, and Wikipedia's Camperdown article says it went to Camperdown in the 1850s.
- Joseph Thompson's arrival. The ABC says 1855, and the Metro report gives 30 April 1834.
- When private removals began. Wikipedia's Central station article quotes the Public Works report giving "the 29th of February 1901", a date that didn't exist because 1901 wasn't a leap year. The notice to relatives was dated 17 January.
- The foundation stone. The 1901–02 Public Works report, as quoted by Wikipedia, says it was laid on 30 April 1902. The State Archives photograph of the ceremony on Commons is dated 26 September 1903.
- Bunnerong's start date. Wikipedia's Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park article says Bunnerong opened in 1888. The 1901 notices describe creating a new cemetery near La Perouse that year.
- How many stones went to Bunnerong. Wikipedia gives 2,825 tombstones. That may just be a mix-up with the 2,285 stones transcribed in 1969–71.
- The Pioneer Memorial Park. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1973 in one place and 1974 in another, Randwick Council's plaque says 1974, and Monument Australia, the Cape Banks society and Wikipedia say 1976.
My Earlier Posts
Sources
- A. G. Foster, "The Sandhills: an historic cemetery" (read to the RAHS 1918, JRAHS 1919), reproduced on my blog
- Dictionary of Sydney – Devonshire Street Cemetery
- Sydney Metro – Central Station Excavation Director's Report, Volume 1 (2024)
- Botany Descendants & Ancestors – Devonshire Street Cemetery removals and reinterments
- Museums of History NSW – Devonshire Street Cemetery reinterment index
- State Library of NSW – Dead Central exhibition
- Sydney Gazette, 29 January 1820 – Government and General Orders on the new burial ground
- Sydney Monitor, 9 March 1829 – A Walk Through Sydney
- Public funeral of the Rev. John Dunmore Lang, August 1878
- Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 1900 – Curwen Campbell letter
- Evening News, 17 January 1901 – removals to begin
- Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 1901 – the removals
- Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1901 – inscriptions in the cemetery
- Evening News, 6 July 1901 – "Nobody's Friends" by Tackra
- Daily Telegraph, 20 September 1904 – Devonshire Street Cemetery Board report
- Dictionary of Sydney – David Jones
- Dictionary of Sydney – John Dunmore Lang
- Dictionary of Sydney – Samuel Terry
- Dictionary of Sydney – 1798 Memorial, Waverley Cemetery
- Australian Dictionary of Biography – John Hubert Plunkett
- Australian Dictionary of Biography – Michael Dwyer
- Australian Dictionary of Biography – Cora Gooseberry
- Australian Dictionary of Biography – John Oxley
- Australian Dictionary of Biography – William Cowper
- Australian Cemeteries Index – James Squire
- Monument Australia – Allan Cunningham obelisk
- NSW Government – Cunningham Obelisk
- Monument Australia – Pioneer Memorial Park
- Randwick City Council – Pioneer Park plaque
- Cape Banks Family History Society – Botany Pioneer Memorial Park
- ABC News, 25 June 2019 – Sydney Metro construction unearths 160-year-old grave
- Sydney Morning Herald, 2019 – David Jones monument at Rookwood
- Wikipedia – Devonshire Street Cemetery
- Wikipedia – Camperdown Cemetery
- Wikipedia – Central railway station, Sydney
- Wikimedia Commons – Devonshire Street Cemetery category
- Image pages on Wikimedia Commons, linked from each picture above.
- Wikipedia – Devonshire Street Tunnel
- Wikipedia – Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park
- Wikimedia Commons – History of Central railway station, Sydney
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