Sydney’s Town Hall was built on a colonial burial ground

In September 1792, four years after the First Fleet arrived, Governor Arthur Phillip and Reverend Richard Johnson chose the “Town Hall” site for the internment of the dead.

Sydney Town Hall building 27/11/89. Pic News Ltd 1989 New South Wales (NSW) / Sydney Buildings / Exterior

Of all the things you might dread digging up in your backyard, a human skull has to be at the top of the list. This nightmare came true for a Tasmanian man recently while he was doing some excavation work at his West Hobart home.

However, despite it being a gruesome crime scene, the home had been built on a burial ground used by the Wesley Church in the 19th century. The last body was buried there in 1872, but when the cemetery was decommissioned the following year most of the bodies were exhumed and moved to a cemetery near Cornelian Bay several kilometres away. But some of the bodies had been left behind in the move.

As is often the case in big cities, cemeteries are moved but bodies are left behind and new owners of the land build over them. One of Sydney’s most famous landmarks, Town Hall, stands in the “dead centre” of the city on what used to be a colonial burial ground.

In September 1792, four years after the First Fleet arrived, Governor Arthur Phillip and Reverend Richard Johnson chose the “Town Hall” site for the internment of the dead. Up to then people had been buried in several places around the colony, including a makeshift graveyard in The Rocks. This was because, traditionally, people in Europe were buried in church yards and the first church in the colony did not open until 1793.

The brick wall (left) was built around the cemetery in 1820 to protect the graves from desecration.

When Phillip and Johnson chose the site it was on the outskirts of the growing settlement. But by 1812, the town of Sydney had inched up to the burial ground, which was already so full that the site had to be extended.

Over the next few years the graveyard became surrounded by shops and there were complaints about the smell. In 1820 authorities ended burials there and surrounded the area with a brick wall to protect the graves from desecration.

Sydney was incorporated as a city in 1842 and the retail and business hub had moved to this part of town, which was then close to the dockyards of Darling Harbour and the Sydney Markets. The graveyard remained as something of an eyesore, until it was decided to make better use of this increasingly desirable plot of land. Sydney’s councillors were looking for a place to build their grand new town hall, as far away from the powerbrokers in Macquarie St as possible, and in 1868 they demolished the graveyard to build their edifice.

The bodies were moved to a new graveyard at Haslem’s Creek, later renamed Rookwood. But in their haste to build the town hall, some bodies were left behind. Some of those bodies would turn up in ensuing decades.

Archeologist Mary Casey working on a colonial grave site found in the basement of the Town Hall in 2008.

In 1926 when the Sydney underground railway was being constructed, workers discovered a tombstone with the name W.M. Bowen inscribed on it, along with the remains of a vault, a coffin lid and “a human shank bone”. Other discoveries by railway workers included a 7ft (1.3m) tall skeleton and a skeleton in evening clothes. When a portico was being added to the building in 1934, workers found more coffins, vaults and bodies. Even as recently as 2008 when work was being done in the cellar of Town Hall, graves were still being uncovered.

We are not the only country to have cities built on graveyards. Several prominent parks in New York City are built on old burial grounds.

Archaeologists working on the UK’s largest infrastructure project, Crossrail, discovered historical burial grounds in central London in 2015. Picture: AP

Washington Square Park was opened to the public in 1827 but not too many years before that it had been used to bury paupers and also part of it was a church graveyard. When it was turned into a park, headstones and some bodies were removed but some say that hundreds or even thousands may still be buried there. Just last year workers digging near the park uncovered burial chambers with coffins and human remains.

London is also riddled with lost burial grounds. Last year while working on a new underground station near Liverpool St, the remains of the Bedlam Hospital burial ground with thousands of skeletons was unearthed. Some of the remains go back centuries and include victims of the Great Plague of 1665.

Originally published as Sydney’s Town Hall was built on a colonial burial ground