[2] It is close to Lidcombe railway station about 17 kilometres (11 mi) west of the Sydney central business district.

The two denominational trusts are responsible for the care and maintenance of a number of burial sections catering to various ethnic and cultural groups within the community.

Rookwood also contains a number of memorial shrines including those dedicated to victims of The Holocaust and to members of the merchant marines killed in wartime.

As the largest Victorian era cemetery still in operation in the world, Rookwood is of significant national and historical importance.

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.

[6] 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.

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.

Other denominations allocated land in the original 200 acres (80 hectares) were Jews, Independents (Congregationalists), Presbyterians and Wesleyans.

[7] The first burial in the cemetery, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, was a pauper, 18-year-old John Whalan, buried on 5 January 1867.

By the 1890s the cemetery was home to several buildings including the St Michael the Archangel Chapel and various cottages for section managers and sextons.

Originally known simply as the Necropolis (Koine Greek meaning "city of the dead"), local residents lobbied officials to have the name of their village changed from Haslem's Creek due to its association with the cemetery.

At the terminus inside the cemetery the coffins were unloaded using 'wheeled hand-propelled litters'[11] The rail line was used to convey funeral parties to Rookwood until 1948 when the expanded use of processions by road made it obsolete.

[16] The commission also erected a memorial to 132 Commonwealth service personnel of World War II who were cremated at Rookwood Crematorium and whose ashes remain here.

[17] Four Japanese Imperial Navy crewmen of midget submarines M-14 and M-21 who died in the World War II Attack on Sydney Harbour during 31 May–8 June 1942 were cremated with naval honours at Rookwood Cemetery.

[20] Within the entrance building is the New South Wales Cremation Memorial, which commemorates 199 service personnel of World War II who were cremated within the state of New South Wales and whose ashes were subsequently scattered or buried at places where commemoration by a CWGC memorial was not possible.