Richmond’s Streets Stories from the Grave

Richmond Cemetery

In the mid-1850s, six acres of land were purchased from W. O. Cautley to establish a public cemetery in Richmond. The land was surveyed by Thomas J. Thompson, who was appointed a trustee, along with John Young, Jacob Batey, Thomas Butler, and William Harkness. The cemetery was open to all, and paupers' burials were conducted free of charge. The first burial took place on 18 October 1856.

A mortuary chapel seating around 60 people once stood inside the cemetery gates on the south side but was demolished around 1940.  The cemetery was taken over by the Richmond Borough Council in 1894.

Richmond Borough Council 1891. Photo from Tasman Heritage.

Richmond's first Borough Council 1891

Standing from left in the photograph, John Croucher, Joseph Best, Alfred Sheat, James Blair (Town Clerk). Seated from left in the photograph, are Samuel Fittall, Joshua Papps, George Talbot (Mayor), and William Harkness.

The Cemetery Tour

As you walk through Richmond Cemetery, many of the names you see on the headstones may already be familiar—not from history books, but from the streets you travel every day. The roads, streets and avenues of Richmond carry the names of influential figures, pioneers, and community leaders who left a lasting impact on the town they helped build.

In 2024 Cheryl Carnahan, Sylvia Rumball, Karel Wallace and Dennis Bush-King, members of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists Nelson Branch, researched the people behind those street names, and conducted a tour of the Richmond Cemetery. offering visitors an opportunity to explore the gravestones and uncover the stories of those laid to rest. 

We invite you to take your own tour through the cemetery using the document they compiled. Accessible here:  

Richmond's Streets: Stories from the Grave 

Included in the above document are the names of the following individuals buried in the cemetery, along with the stories behind the streets named in their honour.

• John Sheat – Alfred Sheat Street
• James Blair – Blair Terrace
• John Wallis Barnicoat – Barnicoat Place
• George Talbot – Talbot Street
• John Martin Croucher – Croucher Street
• Muriel Emma Bell – Bell Street
• Darcy Fauchelle – Fauchelle Avenue
• Hugh Lancelot Brown – Hugh Brown Place
• Albert Rainbow Tuffnell – Tuffnell Street
• William Edward Wilkes – Wilkes Street
• Samuel Fittal – Fittal Street
• Robert Mercer Paton – Paton Road
• Dr Hubert O Washbourn – Washbourn Drive
• George Sutton – Sutton Street
• Joshua Frederick Papps – Papps Carpark
• James Petrie – Petrie Carpark.

Story by: Cheryl Carnahan, Sylvia Rumball, Karel Wallace and Dennis Bush-King

Richmond Streets