About 200 people gathered at Wellington Chapel in Cornelian Bay Cemetery on Wednesday morning to witness the reinterment service for remains uncovered during development work at The Hutchins School in Sandy Bay.
The 1,973 bodies were discovered last year when construction began at the school, which stands on the site of the former Queenborough Cemetery.
The Queenborough Cemetery operated as a private burial ground from 1873 until the 1930s.
Historical records show the cemetery was plagued by controversy, with public scandals about its operations and notoriously poor record-keeping practices.
Previous exhumations at the site were also poorly documented.
“Over 3,000 burials took place at the cemetery. Many of the early Settlers and Merchants of Sandy Bay and well known Hobart Town identities were buried there,” the Sandy Bay Historical Society have detailed in the past.
“The cemetery originally occupied the site from the edge of Sandy Bay Road, extending up Nelson Road on the left, to where Churchill Avenue and the Hutchins School are today.”
Archaeologists and historians working on the recent exhumation project have described it as the largest exhumation in the Southern Hemisphere.
