This photo, taken from King's Hill in West Tamworth in the early 1880's, shows Tamworth's original cemetery inside the fenced enclosure in the foreground.
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The site is now situated behind the Ibis Styles Motel in Ebsworth Street, about 40m in from the present Bridge Street.
The two-storey brick building beyond is still standing. An early bridge over Barnes Gully can be seen on the left.
Established by the Australian Agricultural Company in the mid 1830's, soon after their arrival at their Peel's River Settlement, the small 30m x 12m cemetery was soon full, with 105 burials by its eventual closure in 1859.
William Telfer Jnr in his 'Wallabadah Manuscript' relates - "I saw two men buried in the one coffin in the old cemetery, four in one grave as there was no room to sink another grave at the time in the year eight hundred and fifty."
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Considerable tombstone damage was caused by the 1864 flood, with a few surviving tombstones being relocated onto St Pauls Church hill, with three later transferred to the West Tamworth Cemetery which had opened in 1863, they being for James Robson, Thomas Burke and Andrew Telfer - three of our early Tamworth pioneers, buried in 1845, 1848 and 1858 respectively.
