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Headstones in Devonshire Street Cemetery, showing the tramline being constructed to remove them to Bunnerong Cemetery c1901

By
Ethel Foster
From the collections of the
State Library of New South Wales
[ON 146/373]
(Mitchell Library)

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Devonshire Street Cemetery
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Cemeteries Tram routes Trams Urban design Urban sprawl
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Devonshire Street Cemetery
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Central Railway Station Intercolonial Exhibition Building

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Foster, Ethel

Josephine Ethel Foster was a historian and photographer. She and her husband Arthur George Foster were two of the earliest members of the (now Royal) Australian Historical Society. They documented the Devonshire Street Cemetery in the early 1900s before its removal for the construction of the Central Railway station.

State Library of New South Wales

Devonshire Street Cemetery

Sydney’s Devonshire Street Cemetery, as it has come to be known, was a cemetery of firsts. Not only was it the first time the Surveyor-General grouped a set of burial grounds together; Devonshire Street was also the first time attempts were made to regulate burials and order the cemetery landscape. In use from 1820 until the 1860s, it was Sydney’s second major cemetery.

Cemeteries

Trams

Tram routes

Urban sprawl

Urban design

Devonshire Street Cemetery

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Burial ground established in 1820 on the outskirts of colonial Sydney to replace the earlier burial ground on George Street. It was the city's main burial ground until the opening of Rookwood Cemetery. It officially closed in 1867, although people who had family vaults or previously purchased plots were still being buried there until much later. Also referred to as the Sandhills Cemetery due to its proximity to sandhills, it was resumed in 1901 to enable the building of Central Railway Station.

Intercolonial Exhibition Building

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Exhibition hall built in Prince Alfred Park in 1870 to mark the centenary of Captain Cook's landing at Botany Bay and to house the first major inter-colonial Australian Exhibition.

Central Railway Station

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Central Railway Station, opened in 1906, is Sydney's main rail terminus. Built on the site of the Devonshire Street Cemetery, it replaced a nearby terminus on Devonshire Street.