Barbadoes Street Cemetery and Setting

Barbadoes Street Cemetery's burial record runs in three Church of England registers: No. 1 from 9 April 1851 to 29 January 1870, No. 2 from 2 February 1870 to 3 September 1882, and No. 3 from 4 September 1882 into the 1970s.

Barbadoes Street Cemetery : alphabetical list of burials · 1 Jan 1851 · Christchurch City Libraries

Each register entry records when the person was buried, their name and surname, age, sex, parents' or husband's name, rank or profession, place of residence, and who performed the ceremony.

Barbadoes St Cemetery, Church of England, Register no. 1 · 9 Apr 1851 · Christchurch City Libraries

The cemetery's ground was surveyed in nine historical plot plans, block by block — bordered by Barbadoes Street to the west and Cambridge Terrace to the south and east — and the plots are not consistently numbered; beside the lych-gate in block 3A, plot 780a is noted as apparently infant graves.

Barbadoes St Cemetery plan - area 1B · 1 Jan 1851 · Christchurch City Libraries

The plots were sold: a separate burial plots book keeps receipt numbers, purchasers' names, plot numbers and sizes, and amounts paid, and its later pages record deposits on part-purchased plots, the completed purchase, and when title was given.

Barbadoes Street. Burial plots book · 1 Jul 1872 · Christchurch City Libraries

By 1945 the cemetery sat inside a built-up city — a view across its headstones that year shows residential houses over the back fence — and by 1979 its graves and headstones were weathered, broken or fallen over; headstones still stood in the western portion in 2005.

Barbadoes Street Cemetery headstones · 1 Jan 1945 · Christchurch City Libraries