Linwood Cemetery Tour Guide - Christchurch City Libraries

There’s nothing there, not even a nail …. Not a trace of a long bone or a skull
bone …. There are no remains to remove and rebury – you had better take
some of the earth and bury that”.
Hitchcock paid 500 pounds for the cemetery and, when all expenses were paid, the
congregation pocketed 350 pounds.
When the content of the Jewish Cemetery had been buried in one plot at Linwood, a
headstone was erected with the words ‘Here repose the remains of the following that
were removed from the Hereford Street Jewish Cemetery’. There followed a list of the
people who had been reburied, including Alfred Isaac Raphael, an early Christchurch
City Councillor, who died in 1875. The memorial was restored in 1974.
Sarah Anne Freeman died of tuberculosis on 8 July 1884, and was interred two days
later on the hill at the east end of the graveyard. The Press reported:
The first interment in the cemetery ... took place yesterday, and the Mayor and
members of the City Council attended on the occasion. There was something
peculiar about this funeral from the fact that it was that of the wife of the
sexton.
.... The ground, it may be noted, is very good indeed for the purpose, and a
great deal has already been done in the matter of improving the cemetery by
means of planting &c. The caretaker’s cottage has been erected and is all but
complete, and a kiosk, to be placed on one of the eminences, is the next work
to be carried out. The cemetery is connected with the Telephone Exchange,
and ere long it is hoped a tramway will be constructed to it.
If there was ever a memorial to the unfortunate Mrs Freeman, it no longer exists.
A tramline, the ‘Corporation line’, or ‘Cemetery tramway’, was indeed established. It
ran to the cemetery from the old city council yards on the river bank opposite what is
now Clarendon Towers. By 1885 the council had built a tramway hearse. Alas, the
poor, who might be expected to appreciate cheap funerals, would not accept the
vehicle, however neatly it might accommodate four corpses. In January 1888 the
council’s Cemetery Committee recommended that the sleepers and rails leading from
the tramline into the graveyard (about 12 chains in length) be taken up and used
elsewhere. The New Brighton Tramway Company utilised the line, extending it
through the sandhills where Pages Road is now located, and on to the seaside.
The tramway hearse, which had never been used, lingered in council hands till August
1901, when it was sold for three pounds to S. P. Andrews, owner of the St. Andrew’s
Hill quarries. Andrews had the vehicle on the side of the main road till about 1906-07,
using it as a store for explosives. His sons, Hastings and George, then built a wooden
pontoon, placed the hearse on it, and added a galley. Four bunks were fitted, a
collapsible table installed for meals, and the bunks used as seats. The Andrews boys
spent their summers on the houseboat which was moored off Moncks jetty, the site of
the present Christchurch Yacht Club.
Linwood Cemetery Tour Guide
Updated 2013
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