Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Located at the rear of the St Jude’s Anglican Church at 444 Brighton Road, Brighton, South Australia.

St Judes Cemetery is a State Heritage listed operating cemetery established in 1854 for the St Jude's Church of England.

At the inland end of Jetty Road, stands the contemporary version of old St Jude’s Anglican Church. The original chapel at the rear never gained the ten storey church spire intended when it was built in the 1850s, but it makes up for it in tall stories…only these are true. Many have the name William Voules Brown written all over them.  A footman in old England and a success in early Adelaide, he swung a land deal that helped St Jude’s happen. It included a right of way for all to his cemetery at the back, and so he was curator, grave digger and even host to the wake.   Parts of today’s Brighton Metro Hotel nearby hark back to the “Thatched House Tavern”, and he owned it.   Mr Brown also gave St Jude’s its church bell…on the condition that he could toll it at all the funerals.  Appropriately, he is buried in the cemetery that legally stayed in the family until special legislation resolved the impasse in 1980.

Predictably, there are many more stories in St Jude’s Cemetery.  Four out of the first five burials were infants in the cruel 1850s.

The great geologist and Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson’s simple grave slab is here.

Along with a huge pre-Federation figure, the novelist-social reformer-political campaigner, Catherine Helen Spence. Known as the “Grand Old Lady of Australia”, she is depicted on the five dollar note.

The cemetery is now looked after by the City of Holdfast Bay.  Ph:  08 8229-9938.

Sourced and submitted by Julianne T Ryan.   8/3/2015.  Lest we forget.