Devonshire Street Cemetery - Heritage Tree

Date: 1820 to 1867
Location: Sydney, New South Wales
Surnames/tags: Cemeteries Heritage New_South_Wales

for Profiles Visit Devonshire Street Cemetery, Sydney

Set in concrete in neat lines within Botany’s Pioneer Memorial Park are headstones from a vanished Sydney cemetery.

Enduring the wind, salt and air pollution for more than 100 years,
these 746 headstones are remnants of the Devonshire Street cemetery that once sprawled across sandy, uneven ground bounded by the city’s Elizabeth, Pitt and Devonshire streets — where Central Station now stands. . . . . more from State Library . . .

Andrew Hunter shared a link. - (Sep 2020)

On last night's episode of the "Sydney Super Tunnel" on SBS ONE there were references made to the Devonshire Street burial ground which was next to the original Central Station. Human remains were found during the excavation of the Sydney Metro Central station box and consequently archaeologists were brought in to document the site.

The narrator mentioned that (at the time of the original expansion of platforms) families of the deceased were advised they needed to make arrangements to have the bodies of their relatives moved to new sites, and in some cases re-interred in pits with up to 10 burials per grave. Clearly not all of the remains were exhumed.

The segment included some marvellous black and white images of the headstones which appear to have been sourced from the State Library of NSW, although the "Dead Central" stories page only has a few images.

Further research shows that the images are derived from (magic) lantern slides taken by Mrs. J (Josephine) Ethel Foster (1870-1955) and catalogued by her husband, Theodore Arthur George Foster (1861-1924).

See:

• Findagrave link