56 Fennell St, NORTH PARRAMATTA

The growth of Parramatta outside its early colonial township saw the building of a second Church of England (all Saints) in the 1840s which was constructed as a memorial to Samuel Marsden, on land which he had given. Land to the north was set aside as the burial ground for the church and the first rector, William Gore. The burial ground was known as the Protestant Burial Ground. It contains burials from the 1840s up to the present day. The majority of its monuments and headstones date from the 1850s (when it was possibly the alternative to St John's Cemetery in O'Connell Street - which by then was quite full), until the 1870s, when Rookwood became the major burial ground for Sydney. A number of significant pioneers of the colony are buried in this 1.6 hectare cemetery, including the famous explorer Gregory Blaxland (1771-1852), who along with fellow explorers Wentworth and Lawson, were the first to find a way to cross the Blue Mountains in 1813.

UBD: Map 191 F15