Bolton Street Cemetery

Bolton Street Cemetery encompasses Wellington’s first burial ground and is the resting place of over 8,000 people.

After European settlers began to arrive in Wellington with the New Zealand Company, land for a cemetery for people of all faiths was designated at the Bolton Street site. The original allotment of land for the cemetery was 18 acres; however it currently comprises of 4.57 hectares with land taken for the motorway development, Bowen Street and Anderson Park. It was used as a burial ground from 1840, but records of burials were not kept until 1849, with burial registers being kept by the parish church. At first, graves were marked with low-cost picket fences and wooden markers. This added to the lack of burial information regarding the first burials, as the wooden markers were lost over time.

In 1851, after public debate, the cemetery was divided into three areas known as Bolton Street Cemetery (Church of England), Sydney Street Cemetery (public, for ‘non-conformists’) and the Jewish Cemetery. Roman Catholic burials took place at Mount Street Cemetery, beside Victoria University’s Kelburn campus. From 1978 to 2014 it was known as Bolton Street Memorial Park but has since been renamed Bolton Street Cemetery.

Access to Wellington was becoming increasingly difficult during the 1950s. The Hutt Road was the only access into the city and was often clogged with traffic. To combat this the Ministry of Works designed a motorway that cut through the western city including the Bolton Street Cemetery.

The Bolton Street Cemetery Preservation Society was formed on the 27th of October 1964. This Society helped to raise awareness of the changes to the cemetery and sought support of the Prime Minister and other organisations that might be of assistance. Ultimately the actions of the Society helped to give the site a higher design priority. The scheme involved a large sum of money to restore damage to the cemetery, a piazza to connect separated parts of the cemetery (which was later downsized into a footbridge), land purchases as well as other features which formed the Early Settler’s Memorial Park.

Between 1968 and 1971 public were unable to access Bolton Street Cemetery whilst The Wellington City Corporation exhumed the graves affected by the motorway. There was a considerable effort to record information on the soon to be lost areas of the cemetery. Graves, landmarks and trees to be removed during the development were listed and drawn onto maps. Photographs were taken of individual tombstones as well as of general views of the areas to be disturbed. In addition to this the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation produced video footage and a historian was tasked with recording the history of the cemetery. 3,693 bodies were disinterred and transferred to the memorial vault. 1,037 were unknown burials and may have been from the earliest burials where the wooden plaques and grave surrounds had disintegrated.

Remaining graves of interest include:

Richard John Seddon (1845-1906) - Prime Minister from 1893 to 1906.

John Plimmer - (1812 - 1905) - Business man well known for “Plimmers Ark” which was the wreck of the Inconstant used as a warehouse and wharf.

Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull (1868-1918) - Known for donating his collection of 55,000 items and books to the nation. This later became the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Burial Vault - Contains the remains of approximately 3,700 people disinterred for the motorway construction.

The Wallace Family - Five children passed away in May 1865 followed by the sixth child three months later. Scarlet Fever was a common cause of death among children during this time.