My wife’s great great grandfather was Thomas Sinclair, a Shetland Islander who was, at the time of his death in 1868, an assistant warder with the Convicts Department. I have discussed him elsewhere on this site. As the old records show, he was buried in Guildford on the 7th of July 1868.
The burial was performed by Henry B Grimaldi, who was the Anglican Chaplain of Guildford at the time. The record shows that Thomas was living on the York Road, which is a reference to the fact that he was supervising a convict party working on the maintenance of the road. It is not apparent whether he died on the York Road, where his family was probably living in a warder’s cottage, or in Guildford.
Rev. Grimaldi had also buried Julia, the Sinclairs’ two-year-old daughter, who died in 1866. A couple of things are noticeable on Julia’s record. First, her name is not given and, secondly, there is no date. There may have been some confusion about the child because she had been the subject of an inquest because of the circumstances of her death. As far as I know the Sinclairs had already given the child a name.
Unfortunately there do not appear to be any other records for the burials of either father or daughter. We can assume that they were likely buried together, but this is not certain. Theirs were among the earliest burials in Guildford as well and the numbers next to their names (38 for Julia, 61 for Thomas) suggest that they were part of a small group of Anglican burials in Guildford.
The other entries in the burials records show that a range of people were buried in Guildford by the Anglican Church. Some, for example Walter Jones, were some of the first colonists to settle in Guildford. Walter’s name appears on very early maps of government grant allocations in the town. Others, like Thomas and Julia, were not residents of Guildford but came with the area serviced by Grimaldi. There are entries for Mahogany Creek, Perth Road and York Road, the latter suggesting they may also have been family members of convict warders. Some entries have numbers under their names suggesting that they may have been convicts.
There are two likely candidates for a burial site in Guildford. The first is an area in the Guildford townsite, Lot 29, which was set aside as a burial ground when Guildford was first established and appears in an 1829 plan1 as government land. Burials took place here from a very early period of colonisation.
The second candidate is an area to the north of the townsite where the Guildford Grammar School chapel is now situated. The earliest church in Guildford was built here and burials also occurred in the church grounds. The church land and the burial ground at lot 29 appear on the following 1842 plan of Guildford townsite.
Thomas and Julia Sinclair were buried in 1868 and 1866, either on lot 29 or in the church grounds. Which is more likely?
Lot 29 Burial Ground
The first cemetery in Guildford was lot 29, on the corner of Helena Street and East Street, on the southeastern edge of the townsite. The site was controlled by the Anglican Church and according to a newspaper account some 36 burials occurred there between 1830 and 1841. It is not clear, however, whether further burials occurred here. The newspaper reported that the Church sold the property in 1887 and 30 bodies were transported to the new cemetery at South Guildford. It went on that ‘[w]ith the exception of four, for whom headstones existed, the identities of the others were unknown and it was therefore possible that some of the pioneers of Guildford were among those transferred’.3
The question is whether the Sinclairs were among the burials at Lot 29. If there were no more than 36 burials there, all before 1841, then they could not have been here. But it is unclear whether burials continued there until the land was sold in 1887. Another newspaper report in 1949 supported the view that more burials existed.
While the old East Guildford cemetery, behind Guildford Grammar School chapel, has been in the news lately, both for its state of disrepair and its future disposal, there is yet another closed cemetery which, in the same locality, has been completely overlooked. It lies behind a row of houses facing East-street, East Guildford.
The photograph shows the one surviving headstone and a row of fenced graves sadly overgrown.
Once this cemetery extended from Helena-street to James-street. It was closed prior to the end of last century (except for special cases) and many of the headstones were transferred to the South Guildford cemetery. The land was then sub-divided and sold for building purposes. But the sub-division did not take in the whole of the former cemetery, traces of which are still evident.
Western Mail, 29 September 1949, p.12
The cemetery was eventually completely closed and all the land was sub-divided and sold. Lot 29 is now covered by houses. If the Sinclairs were buried here they were either removed to the South Guildford Cemetery or their graves are now under the suburban houses extending along East Street.
Guildford Church Burial Ground
Western Australia’s first Governor, Sir James Stirling, received a grant of 100,000 acres of land on his appointment and he had large holdings (the Woodbridge estate) to the north of the Guildford townsite. He granted the Anglican church use of a portion of this land in 1834 and a church was built on the site. Although there was an existing cemetery at Lot 29 in the town, Anglican burials took place around the church.
The first church was built in 1836 and was consecrated by the Bishop of Adelaide in 1848.4 Stirling had granted the land to the church but the conveyancing documents have been lost and the land remained officially in the name of Stirling until the government later vested it in the Anglican Diocese. When the original church was demolished the cemetery fell into disuse.5 The present church, St Matthew’s, was built in Stirling Square and consecrated in 1860, so it would have been the church used by the Sinclairs. It’s possible that the burial service for Thomas and his daughter took place at the new church in Stirling Square, but whether they were actually buried in the Lot 29 cemetery or the church cemetery is not known.
In the 1940s the State government decided to widen the road that ran alongside the church cemetery. A proposal to destroy portion of the cemetery and regroup the remaining headstones was opposed by the WA Historical Society with a general meeting of members unanimously rejecting the moving of graves ‘where lay many who lived in the State’s first half century and others who played a prominent part in the State’s later days’.6 Legislation7 went ahead despite objections and the road was widened, obliterating some of the graves. The remaining headstones were reassembled eventually and are now behind the school chapel. The legislation specifically allows public access to the place.
If Thomas and Julia were buried in the church cemetery, and if they weren’t among the graves that were disturbed by roadworks, it is impossible to say exactly where their graves might be. It is likely that the graves were modest ones and the Sinclair family may not have had the financial means to erect sturdy headstones. If there were markers they would have been wooden ones which have now disappeared.
A portion of the church cemetery was apparently set aside for the burial of convicts. Given Thomas Sinclair’s work as a convict warder it is possible that he was also buried there, but there are no records to support this idea.
The Guildford Grammar School archives holds a list of names of the persons it believes were buried at the site but the archivist, Rosemary Waller, cautions that it is an incomplete one. The Sinclairs names are not on the list. As with Lot 29, we cannot say with certainty that the Sinclairs were buried in this cemetery.
South Guildford Cemetery
A cemetery was created south of the Helena River in 1887, largely due to the overcrowding of the existing church cemetery and Lot 29. The new cemetery was originally vested in the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Wesleyan churches but in 1936 the land became the responsibility of the government.8 Problems with access to the site meant that burials continued to take place at the older cemeteries for a time.
Some of the remaining headstones and monuments from the older cemeteries were transferred to the new cemetery, but it is not clear whether the bodies were removed there as well9. There are no complete records of who was transferred to the South Guildford cemetery so it is impossible to say whether the remains of Thomas and Julia were taken there.
At the time of writing (July 2022) the historical section of the South Guildford cemetery was in very poor condition. Grave monuments have fallen into disrepair and the exact location of the graves is not clear. Letters of concern have been sent to the government and to the Anglican church.
Summary
Assuming that Thomas and Julia Sinclair were buried locally in Guildford, there are three possible locations for their graves.
First, the graves might be where the Lot 29 cemetery was in the Guildford townsite. This cemetery is now covered by houses.
Secondly, they might have been buried at the site of the original Anglican church on the land that is now behind the Guildford Grammar School chapel. If so, their names do not appear on the incomplete list of burials held by the school archives.
Thirdly, their remains might have been removed to the South Guildford cemetery along with others from the Lot 29 cemetery or the church cemetery.
Documentation about the cemeteries was apparently lost when Guildford amalgamated with the Shire of Swan so it may not ever be possible to say where the Sinclair graves are.
- SRO Cons 3868 Item 169
- SRO Cons3868 Item 172
- The West Australian, 28 July 1949, p.11
- WA was then part of the Adelaide diocese
- The West Australian, 28 July 1949, p.11
- The West Australian, 30 July 1949, p.8
- Guildford Old Cemetery (Lands Revestment) Act 1949
- Guildford Cemeteries Act, 1936
- Early Graves, Guildford Cemetery, Register of Heritage Places, 14 June 2021
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