Balclutha resident Andrea Craig says the overgrown state of the Glenore cemetery in the Manuka Gorge is "heart-breaking" and a "huge disgrace".
And the man who set up a trust to clear and restore the cemetery is disappointed work to maintain the cemetery was stopped five years ago, largely due to health and safety requirements.
Mrs Craig visited the cemetery, about 10km west of Milton off State Highway 8, earlier this week with her husband, Lester.
She later told the Clutha District Council in an online post it was a "huge disgrace" for the council to allow the neglect.
She was concerned "such an historical place" had been forgotten and it had been "gut-wrenching that we had to climb through such overgrowth and brambles, and no signage to even show where to find these lost souls".
Mrs Craig provided a photo showing the site overgrown by trees and long grass. The council told her the council "does not maintain this cemetery, just like many other cemeteries around the district that have been closed for many years".
"If someone thinks council should maintain it then it would need to be a request through our long-term plan process that gets under way later this year, as there is no funding in the budget for this at present," the council spokesman said.
"To think that we can just close a cemetery and let it be taken over like a long lost fairy tale is heartbreaking," Mrs Craig wrote in a second message.
"Surely the grounds at the very least could be maintained, considering the brambles are so thick and the dry grass above shoulders."
She had "struggled tremendously to find a way to find the sites" of the deceased, and asked the council to "imagine family members who may want to trace steps to their long lost relatives".
Given a council sign marked the cemetery, it should remain "in your budget".
Council officials said they would "absolutely pass your feedback and picture on" to the relevant council manager.
She was also "welcome to make a submission to council", suggesting there should be a budget to maintain the site, when the council consulted on its LTP in a few months. New Zealand Historic Cemeteries Trust chairman Terry Hearn, of Dunedin, said the trust shared the same "general concern" about the state of many of New Zealand’s historic cemeteries.
If there were moves to restore the Glenore cemetery, the trust would like to work with the district council and local community groups "to try to do something" to help.
The Glenore Manuka Trust, the group behind the restoration of the Mt Stuart Reserve, set its sights on restoring the Glenore cemetery back in 2009.
Former trust chairman Alan Williams said any plans it had had for maintaining the cemetery languished about five years ago when community probation teams stopped working on the site because there was no toilet. He said teams had regularly cleared the cemetery and cleared and maintained access tracks for about five years after 2009, before health and safety regulations meant they could no longer continue without a toilet on site.
The trust could not afford to install a toilet, so the project came to an end.
The trust itself still existed but was in hiatus since Mr Williams retired to Waimate about a year ago.
He thought the maintenance of the cemetery could be revisited.
He hoped those responsible for the Mt Stuart Reserve could possibly talk to the council and surrounding landowners about resolving the toilet issue and perhaps bringing back maintenance crews."It was looking pretty good. It is a real shame.
"It doesn’t need much, just a decent scrub-cutter and a bit of spray would do it, but it is a decent amount of work a couple times a year."
Research by Mr Williams, who has written a book on the cemetery, said it was known to contain 91 bodies but only 11 graves still had headstones. He found the first interment there was in 1862; the date of the last burial was unknown.
