Hamilton East Cemetery Free Space

Location: Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand
Surnames/tags: Cemeteries New_Zealand

Hamilton East Cemetery

Hamilton East Cemetery is in the city of Hamilton close to the Hamilton Gardens, which are on one side of the cemetery. Hamilton is a city in the North Island, Waikato Region, about 127 kilometres south of Auckland.

Some of the first settlers of Hamilton are buried here. The site was originally chosen outside the city limits and was influenced by the Rural Park Cemetery movement, of the early 19th Century. This meant that a thoughtful design was put in place, with many tree, plantings and parkland features planned at the outset. The Hamilton East Cemetery shows an early influence of John Loudon in the symmetrical layout and use of evergreen trees, but became less formal with the introduction of deciduous trees and flowers. There was a movement away from the rigid, structured traditional cemeteries, with their formal plots and lots of iron railings and masonry, and the very informal nature of these types of park-like cemeteries were a significant step in the establishment of public parks. You will find in the cemetery trees such as cypress, yew, willow and laurel which were associated with sorrow and loss.

Interments date from about 1865. Some of the headstones, now more than 150 years old, are cracked and crumbling. Old wooden crosses have long since rotted away or been burned by scrub fires. It is difficult to tell how many are buried in unmarked graves here.

Waikato historian Lyn Williams has looked into the stories behind many of those buried here and has conducted public walks for people to learn more about the history. See The Stuff article on Stories from the Graves of Hamilton East Cemetery. Lyn Williams writes a weekly history column in the Waikato Times, entitled: "The dead tell tales".

The Cemetery is administered by Hamilton City Council. On their website is a free to use search tool which can be located HERE.

LOCATION
Cobham Drive
Hamilton
Waikato

GPS:

Latitude: -37.80314

Longitude: 175.30819

LINKS

• Council Cemetery Search
• Find-a-Grave
• Billion Graves
• Council map of Hamilton East Cemetery

Notable Interments

Hamilton East Public Cemetery contains the official war graves of 14 men who served in the New Zealand forces during the First World War and who died before 1 September 1921. There are 37 official graves of those serving in the 1939-1945 war here.

New Zealand Cemeteries Team

This page is maintained by the New Zealand Cemeteries Team, who are part of the Global Cemeteries Project (and the Oceania Cemeteries Team). The aim is is to document the final resting place of those buried in New Zealand, to ensure that each cemetery has its own free-space page, which is linked to the category structure for Global Cemeteries, and that those buried in them are also gathered in the correct category.

• Currently there are 65 profiles listed on Wikitree for this cemetery, which is well short of the number of interments estimated at this location. On Find-a-Grave there are 13838 entries, and Billion Graves has 3143. Irwin-2099 03:25, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

• Currently there are 83 profiles listed on Wikitree for this cemetery, which is well short of the number of interments estimated at this location. On Find-a-Grave there are 13838 entries, and Billion Graves has 3143. Irwin-2099 17:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

• The current interments list (progress tracking for this cemetery) is on Hamilton East Cemetery Interments List

The overall progress of this endeavour will be found on the NZ Cemeteries Team Progress page.