In the 1840s pastoralists moved into the area, and in the late 1840s the township of Warwick was established by the NSW colonial government as an administrative and service centre for the surrounding pastoral district.

Subsequently, an area to the west and north to the Condamine River of the burial grounds became a reserve for extension of the general cemetery.

Complaints about the cemetery continued with comments about locals using it for their dairy cows being raised by an alderman in Council in late March 1867.

However it was not until 25 March 1908 that the Queensland Governor signed a Deed of Grant in Trust that named five Trustees for a Cemetery Reserve of 56½ acres.

[1] The Trustees' income was derived from sale of gravesites, interments and donations and they had to pay the sexton's salary and maintenance costs.

Local architects Dornbusch and Connolly had prepared plans and specifications and had estimated the cost of the timber structure with red asbestos roof tiles at £100.

The core was to be 12 feet (3.7 m) wide with 6-foot (1.8 m) arms stretching out on the four compass corners, and was to be located where two pathways intersected at right angles.

[1] A dominant landmark, erected in 1926, the octagonal William Mitchner Shelter-shed is a single-storey, brick and tin building situated in the middle of the Warwick General Cemetery.

He left explicit instructions in his will, including that it was to be built of brick and was "to contain in the left hand wing thereof a marble monument with an emblem of a simple marble cross resting thereon, the said monument to be surrounded with iron railings and to be inscribed as follows: – 'This Shelter-shed is the gift of William Mitchner for the benefit of the Public'" and the date of his birth and death.

[1] William Mitchner, born on 2 August 1841 in Germany, arrived in Allora about 1872 where he gained employment as a fireman or engineer in fellow German Francis Kates' flourmill.

[1] Established Warwick architects Dornbusch and Connolly, who accepted the tender of Phil Thornton for £1,236 in February 1926, designed the William Mitchner Shelter-shed.

However, it is thought that Charles Astley created the Allora Mitchner bust and Petrie's Stonemasons were involved with the Warwick sculpture.

The Trustees had recently surveyed 5 new sections with spaces for 500 graves marked off in good order and proper alignment.

A properly formed gravelled roadway lead from the main entrance and most paths were well maintained although some were much overgrown with grass.

[1] It was in 1938 that the Warwick City Council proposed the construction of a sewerage treatment works in the northern section of the cemetery.

For various controversial reasons, it was not until late 1940 that legislation was passed that vested Warwick City Council as the new Trustees of the cemetery.

An early doctor, Dr Jonathon Labatt born in Ireland in 1808 and died in 1869, lobbied for a vaccine institution on the Downs.

[1] Andrew Fitzherbert (Herbert) Evans died in 1870; he was Warwicks first Clerk of Petty Sessions and he purchased the land that became the first part of the Cemetery Reserve.

Warwick's first stonemason, Scottish born John McCulloch established his business in 1863 on the corner of Wood and Dragon Streets.

He was nicknamed "the Builder", as he was responsible for the construction of several rural churches, and Warwick's St Marys Cathedral and Christian Brothers College.

[1] The Wentworth Street cyclone wire fence is divided by gates hinged on sandstone pillars that mark the entrance to each section.

[1] The most prominent structure in the cemetery is the Mitchner Memorial Shelter-shed, to one side of the central roadway and in the Church of England section.

A 1924 memorial to a young man features a football and a broken column symbolising a life cut short.

A large 1939 monument near the Lawn Cemetery has a pink granite base below crafted sandstone with an urn framed by columns.

The 1942 grave of a farmer who studied taxidermy has a small kingfisher in a glass-fronted niche at the base of his heart shaped polished black granite headstone.

The words on the McLeod tombstone, which includes the names of a three-year-old and 8-month-old child who both died in September 1864, suggest an epidemic or tragedy.

Inscriptions often include place of birth, words such as "native of Westmeath, Ireland" and "born Taunton Somerset England".

Warwick General Cemetery survives as a good example of its type, with a variety of headstones and monuments illustrating changing public attitudes to commemoration of the dead.

While monuments and headstones vary in size, quality and condition they reflect the social, religious and architectural history of Warwick from the 1850s to the 21st century.

The form and design of the shelter-shed and its dominating central position exhibits aesthetic characteristics valued by the community as do the diversity of headstones, grounds, and formal arrangement of graves.