Creative Chaos

Creative Chaos

Saturday 30 March 2013

City Walk

We went into the city today (actually only about 5 minutes drive from home!). Empty.
First stop was a wool shop - I just had to build up my 10 ply supply :) - have knitted 3 gloves now.... Pic tomorrow of the wool.

We caught the bus from Britomart up to Symonds Street to have a look around the Symonds Street cemetery. I have drive past this hundreds of times over the years and thought it would be a a fascinating look at Auckland's oldest cemetery which was established in 1842. It originally had 4 sections - Anglicans, Jewish, Catholic and a shared Presbytarian and Methodist section.
It was closed to burials in 1886 other than existing family plots.

Due to development of the Auckland Southern Motorway in the 1960s , over 4100 bodies were re- interned in two memorial sites.

The whole cemetery is really neglected and a lot of the graves are in total disrepair and there is a lot of vandalism plus the look of vagrants hanging around.

For the historical value I was really appalled at it and might even ring the council.

Many important people and early colonists of our city are buried there, but impossible to find most of the graves due to the disrepair.

It is in quite an amazing location on 2 sides of a major road and underneath the huge Grafton Bridge.

It was fascinating reading some of the graves with families losing several children in one year, shooting victims etc.

A different family outing but the boys were fascinated - I have done a lot of "granny hunting" over the years as my mum is really into genealogy - I have spent hours in graveyards in England and Scotland looking for relatives graves for mum! We should really go and do the same in NZ cemeteries for the boy's grandfather and great grandparents.































2 comments:

  1. That last grave stone is very sad.

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  2. I love old cemetarys. It is a shame that this one is in such a state of neglect. They can be beautiful, peaceful places.

    Hugs,
    Sharon

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