"Anyone could be buried here, regardless of race, creed, religious status or moral status. It was never consecrated - so it's not holy ground - and no records were kept."
Of the 57 new names, 10 belonged to people for which Ms Leversedge had documentary proof were at the cemetery; 29 were people probably at the cemetery - including those with family there, illegitimate children, suicides, vagrants, waifs and strays; 11 were a variety of older, single Whangarei men for which there was no record of burial elsewhere, and seven were people who were possibly at the cemetery.
"I know there are more because there are gaps in the sequence of registration numbers I have."
She did not want to speculate on an exact number but given the cemetery was "becoming congested" at the time it was closed it was possible up to 700 people were buried there.
The cemetery's colourful history was first documented when Malcolm and Elizabeth Browne were buried there in 1856, after drowning off Parua Bay.
The land was owned by James Burnett, who moved to Nelson in 1858 and gifted 2ha of his land to the Anglican Church, including the cemetery.
Despite being Anglican land it was not used by the Anglicans, who instead had a graveyard at Christ Church, and it became heavily used by Presbyterians, as well as everyone else in the region.
In 1892 the General Trust Board (of the Diocese of Auckland) closed the cemetery to all but those with family buried there, and undertaker Richard Keyte alerted the Whangarei Borough Council (WDC) which resulted in Kioreroa Cemetery being created that year.
In 1927 the trust board then requested the WBC take over the graveyard - and after much to-ing and fro-ing, with neither parties particularly wanting to take over a congested public burial site, the WBC received title to the land in 1938.
The WBC then closed the cemetery in 1941, and it fell into disrepair.
Then in 1951 the headstones were removed after complaints were received from nearby residents about questionable behaviour in the graveyard.