Warwick General Cemetery is a heritage-listed cemetery at Wentworth Street, Warwick, Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Dornbusch & Connolly and built from 1853 onwards by Phil Thornton. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 April 2001.
History The first section of the Warwick General Cemetery was surveyed in 1850, when the town of Warwick was officially laid out, and the earliest burial is understood to have been in 1853. Warwick General Cemetery is located to the west of the Warwick central business district, on an elevated area near a bend in the Condamine River. While the size of the cemetery has changed it has always been organised with denominational sections and includes monuments and memorials pertaining to those who lived in Warwick and the surrounding district, including the prominently situated William Mitchner Shelter-shed.
Allan Cunningham's exploration of the southern Darling Downs in 1827 first revealed the potential of the Darling Downs for pastoral and agricultural usage. In the 1840s pastoralists moved into the area, and in the late 1840s the township of Warwick was established by the NSW colonial government as an administrative and service centre for the surrounding pastoral district. An initial survey of the town was undertaken in 1849, with further survey in 1850. The latter included 8 acres reserved as general cemetery, to the northwest of the township. The first sale of Warwick town lots took place in July 1850.
While deaths and burials occurred in the region and there are early graves on pastoral properties, the first known burial in the Warwick General Cemetery was that of Thomas Howard in 1853. On 23 February 1864 a Deed of Grant was issued to three trustees for 2 acres of land for sole use as by the Church of England. It does not seem that the other denominations acquired such a document. Subsequently, an area to the west and north to the Condamine River of the burial grounds became a reserve for extension of the general cemetery.
Management of this cemetery has often been controversial. A visitor to the region complained in 1859 that the cemetery needed a pig-proof fence. Complaints about the cemetery continued with comments about locals using it for their dairy cows being raised by an alderman in Council in late March 1867. The 1865 Cemeteries Act provided for the regulation of cemeteries throughout Queensland and required Trustees to make by-laws in accordance with the Act. After public meetings in January 1868 the names of five denominational Warwick General Cemetery trustees were gazetted in June 1868. The Trustees formulated regulations and charges. Prior to this no cemetery records existed, however, cemetery transcriptions revealed 11 burials in the Methodist section, 5 in the Presbyterian, 19 in the Catholic and 25 in the Anglican section, pre-1868.
In 1898 the Trustees believed that more land for burial purposes was required. As the area reserved for extension included low-lying land liable to flood from the Condamine River they asked for Portions 328 and 333 to the south of a road and the road adjoining the cemetery to be added as it would allow extension of the Church of England and Roman Catholic sections. Warwick Cemetery Reserve was gazetted on 10 June 1899; it included the additional land. However it was not until 25 March 1908 that the Queensland Governor signed a Deed of Grant in Trust that named five Trustees for a Cemetery Reserve of 56½ acres.
The Trustees' income was derived from sale of gravesites, interments and donations and they had to pay the sexton's salary and maintenance costs. They were conservative with expenditure – for example not fencing the additional land until overcrowding warranted this in 1903. However, in 1911 the cemetery Trustees used 500 pegs of recent design manufactured locally by R Reyburn Warwick Foundry to replace wooden grave pegs. By 1917 prickly pear became a major problem for the Trustees. To assist with its eradication they sought permission, unsuccessfully, for selling off about 26 acres.
In January 1914 the Cemetery Trustees proposed erecting a cemetery rest-house. Local architects Dornbusch and Connolly had prepared plans and specifications and had estimated the cost of the timber structure with red asbestos roof tiles at £100. The core was to be wide with arms stretching out on the four compass corners, and was to be located where two pathways intersected at right angles. An earlier scheme was for a shelter to stand near the centre, on an intersection where the principal roadways intersected. The structure would "harmonise with the foliage of the trees". While the community obviously felt the need, a shelter-shed was not erected until a bequest from William Mitchner enabled its construction.
A dominant landmark, erected in 1926, the octagonal William Mitchner Shelter-shed is a single-storey, brick and tin building situated in the middle of the Warwick General Cemetery. German born William Mitchner of Allora died in Toowoomba on 1 June 1918. Under his will, £1,500 was to be used to erect a memorial shelter-shed. He left explicit instructions in his will, including that it was to be built of brick and was "to contain in the left hand wing thereof a marble monument with an emblem of a simple marble cross resting thereon, the said monument to be surrounded with iron railings and to be inscribed as follows: – 'This Shelter-shed is the gift of William Mitchner for the benefit of the Public'" and the date of his birth and death. The shelter shed was to include a vault for his body and on or near this a plaster bust of himself. To enhance the structure he wanted an appropriate steeple, bell and belfry. The vault and bust were to cost £150 and bell could cost between £150 and £200. The Cemetery Trustees were to invest £200 and use the income for the maintenance of the shelter and bust. The bell was to be tolled whenever a funeral was approaching. He also set aside £800 for a smaller shelter shed at the Allora Cemetery.
William Mitchner, born on 2 August 1841 in Germany, arrived in Allora about 1872 where he gained employment as a fireman or engineer in fellow German Francis Kates' flourmill. Later he was a storekeeper in the shop that was replaced by the Commercial Hotel. He acquired interests in Allora, Warwick and Toowoomba and his death certificate gave his occupation as an investor. His inventory for probate revealed an estate of over $30,000. Mitchner left bequests to both the Warwick and Toowoomba hospitals, money for the Anglican and Catholic churches in both Warwick and Allora and money for the erection of an Anglican church in Hendon.
He also left money to his relatives and hometown in Germany. As Australia was at war with Germany in 1918 legal problems arose from this bequest. The distribution of his estate went to the Full Court in Brisbane in 1921 and on appeal to the High Court of Australia in 1922. Perhaps these legal issues explain why the memorial shelter shed was not put out to tender until 1926.
Established Warwick architects Dornbusch and Connolly, who accepted the tender of Phil Thornton for £1,236 in February 1926, designed the William Mitchner Shelter-shed. This octangular brick and cement structure was designed with a bell tower and seating accommodation inside. It did not have the wing's detailed in Mitchner's will but the shelter-shed does include a vault with marble crosses at either end and marble plaque giving his details but no iron railing. In 1926 the Warwick and Allora Cemetery Trustees agreed to share the cost of a clay model for the bust. However, it is thought that Charles Astley created the Allora Mitchner bust and Petrie's Stonemasons were involved with the Warwick sculpture.
As the Cemetery Trustees died, moved out of the district, or resigned, the pertinent religious denomination appointed their replacements, although these appointments were not always gazetted. By September 1936 there were only two gazetted Trustees even though Churches had nominated new appointees. Meanwhile, there had been no Trustee meeting since 24 December 1933 and the Warwick City Council had been looking after the cemetery. While it was government policy to vest Cemetery Reserves in local councils, the Trustees were keen to retain their positions believing that as volunteers they saved taxpayers money especially as the cemetery was in the Shire of Rosenthal and not within the Warwick City boundaries.
Warwick City Council complained in February 1938 to the Lands Department about the cemetery's condition. A memo from the Toowoomba Land Office to Brisbane commented that the Cemetery Reserve comprised 52? acres including the original 8 acres. The Trustees had recently surveyed 5 new sections with spaces for 500 graves marked off in good order and proper alignment. The southern boundary fence, along Lancaster Street, was renewed and a painted sawn picket fence with suitable gates was erected along the eastern boundary, Wentworth Street, and the northern and western boundaries were adequately fenced. A properly formed gravelled roadway lead from the main entrance and most paths were well maintained although some were much overgrown with grass. The shelter shed containing the remains of William Mitchner in a vault was being repaired and painted at the time of inspection.
It was in 1938 that the Warwick City Council proposed the construction of a sewerage treatment works in the northern section of the cemetery. The Council sought Lands permission to divide the cemetery into two land parcels, with the southern part for Cemetery purposes and the northern for its Sewerage Treatment Works. For various controversial reasons, it was not until late 1940 that legislation was passed that vested Warwick City Council as the new Trustees of the cemetery. The Council's sewerage works were completed during the 1940s.
In April 1946, the Warwick City Council and Imperial (later Commonwealth) War Graves Commission officially established the Warwick War Graves Cemetery; that section of the cemetery then containing 22 graves. A pilgrimage to the war cemetery was held on Anzac Day that year. In July 1947, the local R.S.S.A.I.L.A. proposed to establish an area adjacent to the war cemetery for the burial of returned servicemen. Their request was approved in August 1947. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records Warwick General Cemetery as containing three Australian services war graves (in different parts of the cemetery) from the First World War and 25 from the Second, the majority (21) of the latter being buried in Rows A and B of Plot A.
Council set aside a section of land for a columbarium in 1964. However, the first interment was not until 1972.
In the early 1970s the Warwick City Council established a council depot for machinery and road making materials on part of the northern cemetery reserve, between the cemetery and the sewerage works. By 1974 the Cemetery Reserve was being used for three functions: that of Cemetery, Works Depot and Sewerage Treatment Works. Because it was necessary to gazette the three different uses of this reserve the Deed of Grant upon Trust for the Cemetery was surrendered in 1976 so that Lands could re-survey the land, dedicate roads and issue new Deeds of Grant.
Gazettal of the Warwick Shire Council as Trustees of the three reserves did not occur until 16 May 1997. At this time the former cemetery reserve bounded by the Condamine River in the north, Wentworth Street, Lancaster Street, Taylor Street and Lots 325 and 326 became a reserve for sewerage, a council depot and a reserve for cemeteries, crematoriums and mortuaries. The cemetery was reduced to an area of 13.63 HA (30 acres) and is separated from the depot by a road. While it is still located to the west of the CBD, it no longer includes the low-lying area adjoining a bend in the Condamine River as that area is used for other local government purposes.