The Symonds St Cemetery, was never intended for sale. Governor Hobson had set aside this Crown land in 1842 for a cemetery that lay one mile from the town center. Anglican’s were laid to rest on the eastern side of the Upper Symonds St Cemetery. On this side the Baptists, Wesleyan known as dissenters, plus ‘other’ too were buried on the North Western side of the Grafton Bridge.  

Across the road, the western part of the Cemetery had been divided into three lots, the Jewish fronting on to Karangahape Road, the Presbyterian’s front to the middle, and the Catholic cemetery at the back, finishing at East St (Ian Mckinnon Drive).  

Ironically, the Cemetery was closed to burials because of the possibility of the graves infecting the Newtonian wells. Only those who had descendants’ graves were buried there until the late 1890’s.

A portion of these graves in the eastern Anglican cemetery and all of the graves in the Catholic cemetery were dug up and removed in the 1950’s to allow for the Newton Motorway Interchange. The bones of the deceased from these graves were washed, and were reburied in a mass grave underneath two massive gravestones. The Anglicans were buried in the Anglican quarter, and the Catholics on a plot of land behind the Presbyterian graves facing St Benedict’s church. 

The Symonds St Cemetery is today’s connection to colonial Auckland. In essence its presence in bustling Auckland is quietly confronting, offering us a moment to reflect on our mortality, while acknowledging the everyday people who had chosen to live in a new colony. These settlers brought with them their homeland’s Victorian sensibilities, religious ideals, technical, and scientific discoveries of that time. The Newtonians were no different. In order to survive, this ‘New Town’, became a community that worked together to build a physical, social, and political infrastructure that would benefit all. How this was done is well worth the read.