St Judes Cemetery, Brighton, South Australia

Cemetery Details

Location Brighton Road , Brighton, Holdfast Bay - South Australia, Australia
Co‑ordinates S35.016896, E138.523078
Description

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.

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Names

Showing 8 people of interest from cemetery

ALDRIDGE, Harry Richmond

Service number 515
Lance Corporal
Born 18 Jan 1891

GOOD, David Spencer

Service number SX12330
Lieutenant
2nd/27th Infantry Battalion
Australian Military Forces (WW2)
Born 3 Feb 1918

BALDOCK, William Alfred

Service number 271
Private
Born 3 May 1896

MILDE, Arthur John

Service number 437076
Warrant Officer
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Born 28 Sep 1924

SMEATON, Bronte

Service number OFFICER
Major
Australian Army Medical Corps WW1
AIF WW1
Born 6 Oct 1873

BRUCE, Randolph Roy

Service number 4079
Driver
Born 1 Dec 1897

FROST, Alan Leonard

Service number 37677
Able Seaman
HMAS Torrens (Depot) / HMAS Encounter (Shore)
Royal Australian Navy
Born 20 Apr 1926

RYMILL, Richard Stanley Carstairs

Service number SX234...
Sergeant
Born 12 Sep 1917