(Former) Mortuary Station, Regent St, Sydney
James Barnet, Byzantine, capital, cemetery, Chippendale, column, funeral, Gothic, Gothic Revival, lancet window, Moorish, Mortuary Station, moulding, New South Wales, NSW, pointed arch, railway, Regent Street Railway Station, Rookwood Cemetery, sculpture, spire, Sydney, Venetian Gothic.
The former Mortuary Station is located behind Sydney’s Central Station in the inner-city suburb of Chippendale on Regent Street, after which it was renamed. The station was designed by James Barnet and completed in 1869. It was part of the Rookwood Cemetery railway line, whereby special funeral trains transported bodies from the city centre to the cemetery for burial. The station is in the Gothic Revival style, in particular the 14th-century Venetian Gothic, and was deliberately designed to appear like a church (Indeed, one of the former stations on the line was dismantled and rebuilt in Canberra where it is now a church). The Venetian Gothic style combined elements from Gothic, Byzantine, and Moorish architecture. Mortuary Station features columns topped with decorated capitals, small lancet windows, pointed arches, a pointed-arch ticket window, decorated chimney, a spire, and bas-relief sculpture including a foliage motif and cherubs
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The Rookwood line was officially closed in 1948 but the renamed Regent Street Railway Station is still sometimes used for special events.
McLeod, Shane
December 17, 2012
No Copyright
Digital Photograph
A Viking Funeral Ship
Examiner, funeral, grave goods, grave robbers, Launceston, Norse, Norway, Oseberg, ship, TAS, Tasmania, Viking
An article on page 2 of the Launceston newspaper the Examiner on September 2, 1908. The anonymous public interest article reports on the recent excavation of the Oseberg ship in Norway. The article describes the ninth-century burial ship, found under a ‘tumulus’, the two women found in it, and the rich grave goods uncovered, including beds, sledges, and a cart (described as a chariot). It also reports that part of the burial had previously been plundered by grave-robbers. The article also speculates that one of the females in the burial was a slave killed to accompany her mistress. The ship and its contents can now be seen at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.
Anon.
National Library of Australia
The Examiner
2 September 1908
No Copyright
Newspaper article; PDF
English