Lithgow Cemetery, Bowenfels, New South Wales

Date: 1870 [unknown]
Location: Great Western Highway, Bowenfels, New South Wales, Australia

Surnames/tags: Cemetery New_South_Wales

Profile manager: Dale Norris

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General Information

Cemetery name: Lithgow Cemetery

Address: Great Western Highway, Bowenfels, New South Wales, Australia 2790

GPS Coordinates: -33.49279100004816, 150.13180242330392 OpenStreetMap Google Maps

History

Situated on a large sloping site, Lithgow General Cemetery is a significant regional cemetery that has served the Lithgow area since about 1870. It is set out in denominational and general portions and includes a small lawn cemetery and an extensive columbarium as well as several gardens for the placement of ashes. Each portion is signposted with details of all the rows within it and almost every row is separately marked. Intermittent lot numbers help to quickly locate any grave.

The older areas of the cemetery close to the main road obviously have suffered considerably from vandalism at some time and many of the older monuments have disappeared. No doubt some have also been lost due to subsidence and several at present are in a rather precarious state. An unfortunate feature of the cemetery is the large number of marble tablets that are of such poor workmanship as to be almost unreadable, even though no more than 50 years old. We have spent countless hours doing our best to decipher them and have been greatly assisted in this task by reference to Council’s records.

Lithgow is a city that has grown up as a steelworks, coal mining and railway town. Many of the inscriptions in the cemetery record the accidental deaths of persons in all three of these spheres of employment. At the lower end of the cemetery is an enclosed monument on which are mounted plaques recording the names of babies, mostly stillborn, who have been buried in unmarked graves.

More Information

References

This is part of the Australian Cemeteries Project.