The Reinterment of Devonshire Street Cemetery

Established in 1820, Devonshire Street Cemetery was the main burial ground in Sydney until the passing of the Sydney Burial Grounds Act in 1866. Under the Act, interments in Sydney burial grounds were discontinued in an attempt to protect public health. Only those who had existing family vaults or previously purchased plots could apply to the NSW Government for a licence to bury their family members in Sydney. A few decades later, in 1901, the cemetery was resumed by the state to make way for Sydney’s Central Railway Station, and the government began the process of liaising with relatives of the deceased over the exhumation and reinterment of their loved ones.

This webinar explores the records from the NSW State Archives Collection that reveal the history of one of Sydney’s oldest burial grounds and the mammoth job of reinterring those buried there to allow for the construction of Central Railway Station.