In 1819, Governor Lachlan Macquarie established Sydney's main burial ground near the town's brickworks. By the 1840s, the Devonshire Street Cemetery was close to being full so another larger site was needed. A location on the Sydney Common was chosen in 1845, but abandoned in 1859 without ever being used due to complaints from local residents and churches. In Australia, as in Europe, there was an increasing trend to move burial sites outside of the cities for practical, hygienic and other more aesthetic purposes. With a railway line having been completed to Parramatta in 1856, it was decided to locate the new cemetery at a point on the line. Several sites were surveyed and found to be inappropriate. However, in 1862 the government purchased 80 hectares of land at Haslem's Creek from the estate of Edward Cohen. Cohen's land had previously formed part of a larger parcel known as "Hyde Park" that had been given to the magistrate and parliamentarian Henry Grattan Douglass in 1833 and subsequently leased out. The site was approved due to its relative isolation and proximity to the railway line.