There were three early burial sites in Sydney. The first was somewhere in the vicinity of the current Erskine and Clarence Sts. The second, this one, occupied what is now the site of Sydney Town Hall. The third one was the Devonshire St site which is now Central Station.
The cemetery operated from 1790 to 1820. Most of the remains were exhumed in 1869 and transferred to Rookwood to allow the Town Hall to be built. Human remains have been discovered during building works on and around the Town Hall on various occasions since, the most recent being in 2007.