Thanks Terry, Very interesting. The place I best know of with an E-W oriented headstone is at Upper Castlereagh church. Also, the church there (a very early church) has its door facing west ... just as you indicate is the 'ideal', i.e. to commence the spiritual journey in the west (from out of darkness) and head towards the rising sun, the light, enlightenment (= renewal/revival/resurrection? .. or 'born again' in USA parlance). My religious studies are making some progress, thanks to you. So where is this particular Sydney church you write about with that section? Is it St Mary's cathedral? Were there burials around it? Or was this a set-aside portion within the general Sydney cemetery .... that got later on built over by the Sydney Town Hall? Re 'unconscreated portion' set aside for the unbaptised (infants), and for disobeyers (e.g. those who marry outside the church), and for those who suicide ... that all makes sense. And agrees with what somebody told me about E-W running headstones .. that they signify suicide. At the Upper Castlereagh cemetery though the E-W trending headstone in right in the middle of normal N-S trending ones. I guess suidicide wasn't popular enough at Upper Castlereagh to set aside a whole area for it. Goodness knows why not, because it must have been a pretty hard life there for many, e.g. prior to Warragamba Dam it often flooded and many people would have lost everything more or less. Cheers, John ~~~~~~ >At 02:00 PM 4/02/2010 +1100, you wrote: >Good Afternoon, >I may be somewhat late in this thread, so if this has already been mentioned my apologies. >The following may be of interest:- >'.. Plenary Council of the Roman catholic church in Sydney in 1885 the setting apart of an unconscreated portion of the cemetery separated by a fence or wall for the purpose of '....the burial of infants who die without baptism, and of others, who according to the canonical enactments are deprived of ecclesiastical burials' ie those who marry outside the church, those who suicide.' > '..The graves themselves are orientated north south which would tend to contradict the `Order Established in the Mother Country' of a east west location.' Lachlan Macquarie determined 'graves.were to be carefully aligned east and West according to the Order Established in the Mother Country'(See Lionel Gilbert excellent work - "A Grave Look at History").. > "..The graves of those with German sounding names are located to the north eastern corner of the old cemetery in a semblance of chronological order. Mutzelburg notes that it was the custom for German Baptists and Lutherans to bury their deceased in chronological order row by row starting at one end of the grave yard [1] However it would appear that this custom was not a religious but rather cultural. Source: Own research. See 'Historical Notes www.terrycallaghan.net >'.. The church . followed the Christian practice of having the entrance on the west end of the nave so that the 'spiritual aspirants commence(d) their journey in the West and proceed through the door and the nave towards the sanctuary in the east' Thus representing in allegorical sense the way or path to salvation...The nave ( from the Latin 'navis', ship ) or body which symbolised to Christians the means of transport to their spiritual home' See 'Historical Notes www.terrycallaghan.net >Hth >Terry