In 1850, in response to a Government health inspector's critical report about sanitary conditions and public health in Brighton—which recommended that burials in churchyards and chapel burial grounds should cease—the doctor and political John Cordy Burrows, architect Amon Henry Wilds, Goulty and his son Horatio Nelson Goulty established the Brighton Extra Mural Company, acquired 13 acres of land near Race Hill, and laid out a private cemetery for Anglican, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist burials.