Heritage consultant Ann Mcewan tells the stories behind the region’s notable structures.
As Lyn Williams demonstrates on this page every week, cemeteries are places of great historic interest. Each grave has a story to tell, so to speak, and every person who has gone before us is part of the wider history of the region.
Cemeteries can also be places in which you find interesting buildings. Mortuary chapels and crematoria, like the landscape-style cemetery, are associated with Victorian ideas about public health and, to some extent, the secularisation of civil society.
Burial grounds located independently of churchyards evolved in Europe in the early 19th century. The first cremation to take place in England occurred in 1885, three years after cremation became legal in New Zealand. According to Te Ara, the online Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, the crematorium opened in 1909 at Karori Cemetery in Wellington is thought to be the first in the southern hemisphere. Other sources suggest the Crematorium, Hamilton Park Cemetery, Newstead Australians may have beaten us to it.
Hamilton has three cemeteries, two dating from the mid-19th century and the other from the mid-20th century. Hamilton East Cemetery opened in 1865 and the oldest headstone in Hamilton West is dated 1869. Both of these cemeteries reached capacity last century and, as a consequence, Hamilton Park Cemetery opened on the outskirts of the city in 1957.
In January 1963 the region’s first crematorium opened on the Newstead site. This building, containing both a funeral chapel and crematorium, was designed for the Hamilton City Council by HL & AW White. In its simple rectangular form with gabled roof and arcaded side walls this building may be described as a modern interpretation of the Gothic Revival chapel. The newspaper account of its opening described the Christian ornamentation of the interior; a sign that it was expected that Christian funeral services would be held in this civic building.
Today a large porte cochere, which provides shelter for the funeral hearse and mourners, obscures the original facade of the building. Readers interested in other buildings from the same era might like to visit the Modern Hamilton website, which has recently been established to highlight the city’s modernist architectural heritage. hamiltonmodern.blogspot.co.nz.
Got a question for Dr McEwan? Email her c/o features editor Deborah Sloan, deborah.sloan@waikatotimes.co.nz.