Many of us avoid cemeteries for as long as possible, but Stephen Deed says they have fascinating stories to tell. He talks to KIM DUNGEY.
But the author of a new book on New Zealand's old cemeteries says their atmosphere and their ability to connect us to the past make them significant parts of our landscape.
Deed describes cemeteries as outdoor archives that reflect important events like immigration, conflict over land and the discovery of gold. The style of the monuments illustrate changing tastes and advances in technology, the historic plants are some of the earliest surviving examples of introduced species and the funeral chapels, sexton's cottages and gatehouses are ''amazing'' structures that have been largely ignored.
As a history student in Dunedin, Deed once climbed up to the Northern Cemetery to get a good view of the city and discovered a place of ''beauty and atmosphere'', where the city's history was brought to life.
In the 19th century, cemeteries functioned as parks on the edges of cities and were even seen as ''public attractions''.
''It sounds weird,'' he says on the phone from his London home, ''but there was a different attitude to death back then. People were openly interested in it in a way we aren't now and would go to look at gravestones.''
The historian and librarian says a combination of factors gradually led to people having less to do with cemeteries. Medical advances meant people could go ''quite a few years'' with no-one in their families dying and no need to visit cemeteries. Better transport meant they were sited further away from the living and became places just for the dead.
Like many of us, he does not particularly like visiting new cemeteries that force him to reflect on his own mortality. But the 34-year-old hopes his book will make people more aware of historic cemeteries ''and what we should be protecting''.
Unearthly Landscapes: New Zealand's early cemeteries, churchyards and urupa describes a diverse range of burial places, from family cemeteries in rural areas to those on Otago's goldfields. They include the grand Larnach family tomb in Dunedin's Northern Cemetery; the graves of ''Somebody's Darling'' and the man said to have buried him, at Millers Flat; and the graves of Otago Boys' High School rector the Rev Thomas Campbell, his wife, five children and two maids, who all drowned soon after arriving in Dunedin in 1863.
What united all the early cemeteries was the way the settlers adapted traditional practices to their new environment, Deed says. While those in ''wealthy'' Dunedin soon had access to Oamaru stone and decorative cast-iron surrounds, in most places graves were marked with wooden headstones and palings. The native cabbage tree and the quick-growing pine replaced traditional evergreens such as the cypress and yew. And whereas Britain's urban cemeteries were often divided simply into consecrated (Church of England) and unconsecrated ground, New Zealand's were usually sectioned off into multiple denominational portions, reflecting the diverse origins and religious affiliations of the settlers.
The book also details the practice of reusing graves, which Deed says seems bizarre to New Zealanders but is still common in parts of Europe. In the 19th century, churchyard burial grounds in British cities were so overcrowded that the ground ended up several feet above adjacent pavements and partially-decomposed bodies were regularly disinterred and dumped in pits to free up room for the newly dead.
Here, many of the first cemeteries were instead sited on public reserves or green belts. However, by the 1850s some were seen as being ''uncomfortably close to the living'' and feared as a source of disease, while others, were already badly run down.
Deed says while the importance of whakapapa and tupuna (ancestors) in Maori culture means urupa are usually well maintained, some old European cemeteries have been viewed as unproductive spaces that could be turned to other uses.
In the 1960s, large portions of two of New Zealand's oldest cemeteries were destroyed to make way for motorways and in the 1970s, an embarrassed Dunedin City Council planted trees in the Southern Cemetery to hide neglected gravestones from view.
However, a growing interest in national identity and family history means attitudes are changing, he says.
The Dunedin-based Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand promotes cemetery conservation, ''friends of the cemetery'' groups undertake maintenance work and in the past 12 years Heritage NZ (formerly the NZ Historic Places Trust) has added about a dozen cemeteries to its list of heritage sites: ''When I wrote my thesis [in 2003], there wasn't a single one.''
In other changes, about 70% of bodies are now cremated and there is a growing interest in eco-burials.
Problems still exist. In the absence of minimum standards for cemetery maintenance, most councils simply mow the lawns.
Descendants, who are responsible for the plots and the monuments on them, often ''move away and forget or don't care''. Non-descendants willing to do volunteer work are not allowed to unless they go through the ''very long, if not impossible'' task of tracing relatives and gaining permission.
To counter this, Deed would like local authorities to meet minimum standards for maintenance and detail how the plants, graves and other structures will be cared for. Conservation plans already prepared for big cemeteries could be used as a template in others.
Councils could help people locate relatives' graves in the expectation they would then look after them. And relaxing the rules would allow the oldest graves and monuments to be ''adopted'' by individuals or groups willing to keep them in good condition.
In Britain - the place where our burial traditions began and where Deed works in the library of the Royal College of Physicians - some old cemeteries are still being cared for by the private companies that established them. But others, long closed and devoid of income, are ''literally jungles''.
''Like in New Zealand, they are huge places that need specialised, sometimes expensive, care ...''
The big, traditional cemetery, while still popular, is not environmentally friendly or sustainable, he believes.
''It takes up so much space and it's land that's locked into that use for ever. The historic cemetery is important and should be maintained but I think that [model] is not the way forward.''
