WELLINGTON, New Zealand — While New Zealand’s capital city might be best known for its cable car, Cuba Street and coffee, Wellington is home to another unexpected landmark that offers a window into the city’s past.
Nestled on a picturesque slope near Wellington’s city center, Bolton Street Memorial Park, previously known as Bolton Street Cemetery, dates back to the 19th century. The burial ground was developed from Church of England, Jewish and public cemeteries.
The cemetery has 1,334 visible memorials and headstones, some of which commemorate Wellington’s early settlers. It also features a collection of heritage roses and mature trees among the historic graves.
Bisected by the Wellington Urban Motorway, the cemetery, classified as a historic reserve, offers a unique green link between the Wellington Botanic Garden, The Terrace, and the central city. To accommodate the motorway, 3,700 graves were uncovered and reburied.
“Bolton Street Cemetery has a peaceful and contemplative atmosphere appropriate to a cemetery,” according to a September 2014 Botanic Gardens of Wellington Management Plan. “The layout is informal and the garden, with its many naturalised plants growing in profusion, has a ‘wild,’ ‘old world’ quality that adds to the sense of history.
“It is rich in detail of pathways, historic artefacts and plants,” the plan added. “Apart from the main gully system, it is very much a created and constantly tended landscape aimed at safeguarding a unique piece of Wellington’s cultural history.”
In 1960, the City Council established an urban plan, which identified the need for a motorway, part of which would run through the cemetery. The City Council passed an act to build the motorway seven years later, a move that caused considerable controversy.
Officials exhumed roughly 3,700 burials in the path of the motorway. Most remains were reinterred in a vault beneath a memorial lawn at the cemetery; others were reinterred in different cemeteries.
The cemetery was closed from March 1967 through 1971. The new motorway opened in 1978, and Wellington City Council Parks renamed the burial ground the Bolton Street Memorial Park.
