[1] As well as historic monuments, the cemetery also preserves important elements of landscape gardening of the mid-19th century, and examples of native flora, which are now rare in the built-up inner city.

Camperdown Cemetery is valued by the residents of Newtown as providing a major greenspace located in the immediate vicinity of a busy commercial centre.

[3] The other species include several large spreading blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon), a row of Canary Island Palms (Phoenix canariensis) along one side of Jamison Avenue dating from the 1930s, a grove of Chinese Elms (Ulmus parvifolia), two large African Olives (Olea africana), Lemon Scented Gum (Corymbia citriodora), Melaleucas, a Port Jackson Cypress Pine (Callitris rhomboidea) and two stands of Giant Bamboo.

It was founded as an Anglican General Cemetery, accepting the dead of all denominations, but burying them with the rites of the Church of England.

The land passed to his daughter Mary, who married Bligh's Aide de Camp, Major Putland, and following his death, Sir Maurice O'Connell.

The first interment was that of Bligh's son-in law, Lieutenant Governor Sir Maurice O'Connell who died in 1848, shortly before the cemetery was opened.

His remains were exhumed from Devonshire Street, and reburied with due honours and a large memorial at the top of the hill at Camperdown.

In the 1850s the small headstone of Mary's first husband, John Putland, who had died in 1808 and been buried at the Old Burial Ground, was given by St Philip's, York Street, and placed in the cemetery where it became the oldest memorial.

Another significant burial in the same year is that of Sarah, wife of Bishop Broughton, who rests beneath the largest slab of stone in the cemetery.

The Bishop planted a Chinese Elm at the foot of her grave, and since then a small grove of these trees has sprung up in that part of the cemetery.

[10] The resulting St Stephen's Church, which held its first service in 1874, is a masterpiece of Gothic Revival architecture, and contributes greatly to the heritage significance of the site as a whole.

In 1948, an Act of the NSW State Parliament established the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, which was put under the control of the local council.

The area of cemetery that adjoined St Stephen's Church was walled off from the park and continued to be managed by a body of trustees.

Outside the wall, the park was cleared of trees and monuments, and a memorial garden, planted initially with Peace roses, was established on the south side.

[nb 1] The removal of the memorials from the park was a heritage disaster, resulting in the damage of a great number of the stones.

[14] The chairman of the trust at that time was P. W. Gledhill, a trustee from 1924 until his death in 1962 and whose enthusiasm for the project left many visible marks on the cemetery.

These include the Erskineville water fountain, a longitude and latitude marker on a plinth made out of salvaged pieces of Camperdown Villa, and the pediment from the Maritime Services Board building dating from the 1850s.

In the late 1980s a Bicentennial Heritage Grant made possible the restoration of the Cemetery Lodge and the basic repair of many broken monuments.

A conservation strategy for monuments was created,[17] a landscape management plan was commenced and several individual studies focussed on aspects of the cemetery such as inscriptions, trees, native flora and the Dunbar tomb.

The vandalised gravestone of one of the cemetery's best-known inhabitants, Eliza Emily Donnithorne, a jilted bride whom many believe inspired Charles Dickens' creation of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, has been restored.

The lodge is a small cottage of three rooms and an attic, which stands in the right corner of the remaining area of the cemetery, when approached through the gates from Church Street.

Another horizontal form is the chest or altar-style monument which has Classical architectonic detailing, of which the tomb of Sir Thomas Mitchell is a typical example.

An eleven-year-old boy who blew himself up while celebrating Guy Fawkes Night has Catherine wheels carved on his tombstone.

One is the badly damaged monument to the harpist, Nicholas Bochsa, surmounted by the mourning figure of a grieving woman and a bare tree trunk on which his harp hangs, its strings broken.

Another unique monument is that of John Ley, Foreman of Mort's Dock, which is the forged blade of a ship's propeller.

[5] Some of the most prominent and remarkable features of the site are not tombs or gravestones but are an assortment of objects, mostly architectural, that have been saved from destruction and placed in the cemetery.

These include a decorative water fountain with a Gothic arch, previously in Erskineville, placed in the cemetery as a memorial to E.W.

Another such memorial is an anchor from Morts Dock attached to which was a chain from the S.S. Collaroy that ran aground on the beach now known by that name in 1881.