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unpretending building, not ugly and not handsome. There is no regular reading-desk there at
present; the prayers are read from inside the aitar rails. In the afternoon I visited the Cemetery.
It is a melancholy
bit of ground, of about 10 to 12 acres, laid out in poor taste and wretchedly kept. A few dismal
trees attempt to flourish among the graves; long coarse grass springs up in rank luxuriance, and
the paths are overgrown with weeds. Some of the inscriptions, both Latin and English, are
misspelt...'
In time, Honeycotnbes would be buried there - one the following year.
On 30 July 1840, the Rev Mereweather walked the seven miles to Heidelberg, and back. He
was visiting another clergyman, whose church was in the process of being built of stone. Land
thereabouts, Mereweather noted, was costly. He walked back by sunset - The air is so
transparent and elastic that no amount of exercise seems to tire.' He also noted the temperatures
for the previous week: the lowest, at sunrise and sunset, was 38°; the highest, at 2.3Gpm, was
58°,
It is probable that, apart form clerical contacts, Mereweather had some relatives in Austraiia.
An Edward Mereweather, who died in 1896, became Secretary of the Royal Geographical
Society, and Francis Mereweather wrote some reminiscences in 1898.
John Mereweather's account of central Melbourne, written on 4 August, described the
surroundings in which the Honeycombes were living at that time.
'Rambled about Melbourne, and was astonished at the well-being which seemed to prevail
everywhere, at the weil-fiited stores, at the number of butchers' shops, at the independent,
contented, young look of the population. The scarcity of old people is very striking. The chief
streets in Melbourne are Collins Street, Bourke Street, and Lonsdale Street, running east and
west; and Elizabeth Street and Swanston Street, running north and south. These are very fine,
wide streets, but the east and west streets have a little street running parallel with them, a sort of
diminished double, all of which are Nl-kept and have miserable buildings in them. The
inhabitants are low and dirty, and these localities, seeming as they do the very centre of the city,
are so many nuclei of bad smells and disease, At the first laying out of the town it was intended
that these streets should be appropriated as mews to their big brothers; but as land increased in
value, men, not horses, came to inhabit them. The west end of one of them, cailed Little Collins
Street, is nicknamed Chancery Lane, on account of the great congregation of lawyers in that
locality.'
William Honeycombe, his wife Elizabeth, and their four children were living in Little Bourke
Street.
A Victorian directory for 1851 lists him as being at number 3, and gives his occupation as
'stonemason'. In those days the odd numbers were on the north side of the Melbourne streets
and they numbered in this case from Elizabeth Street, going east as well as west. So 3 Little
Bourke Street (East or West) was in the centre of the town.
Four streets to the east was Spring Street and the first Parliament House-Behind it was St
Patrick's Cathedral, whose foundation stone was laid in 1850. Perhaps William and Henry were
employed as masons on the building of the first Cathedral. After an, William had worked for a
London company in Devon constructing or renovating bridges and other major public works.
But wherever they were, they would not have lived far from their place of work, whether their
employers were public or private companies.
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