Jun 29, 2009

Epitaph: Frank Garrard 1852-1881


In Christchurch's sadly neglected pioneer cemetery, and close to where the 1863 chapel stood until 1955, lies the second grave of 29 year-old Frank Garrard.

Captain Francis George Garrard
2 March 1852 - 30 April 1881

On his way to Melbourne for his wedding, the youngest captain in the inter-colonial service drowned along with another 130 souls, when his vessel was wrecked on the Otara Reef at Waipapa Point, near Invercargill. The sad tale of their demise is enshrined as one of our nation's most tragic shipping disasters.

A graduate, with distinction, of the Royal Naval School at Greenwich and hero of a subsequent shipwreck, Garrad had been readily promoted from Second Officer of the Hawea to Chief Officer of the steamship Taupo, then Master of Albion and finally to the command of the Union Steamship Company's 17 year-old, trans-Tasman liner Tararua. Third owners of the ill fated 828 ton steamer (below), the Union line employed her on the regular passenger service between Lyttelton, Port Chalmers, Bluff, Hobart and Melbourne.


Found with a pocket watch and a locket containing a portrait of his prospective mother-in-law on his corpse, Frank was intially buried in what would become known as the Tararua Acre, just above the beach where his body had washed ashore. Exhumed on the instruction of his former classmate at the Royal Navy School and brother-in-law, the shipping magnate Sir Joseph Kinsey, Frank Garrard was reburied at Christchurch three weeks after his demise. He lies beneath an imposing monument, the upper part of which is carved to resemble an anchor held fast in rocks.

Special thanks to Sarndra Lees for the grave photo and the inspiration.

Photographic Excellence: Hagley Park


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Taken on Saturday, the 27th of June, 2009 by Jonathan Bird of Saskatoon, Canada, this is a Winter's early morning view of North Hagley Park

Jun 23, 2009

Restored 1923 New Brighton Landscape


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This is a restoration of the unattributed painting on the cover of a 1923 pamphlet promoting the attractions of Christchurch's marine suburb of New Brighton. In this northerly aspect of the beach, the 1894 Pier can be seen in the middle distance.

Including local information and a history of the area, the extensively illustrated 64 page booklet was published by the New Brighton Publicity Committee in association with the Canterbury Progress League. A 6.3 Megabyte copy, in PDF format, can be downloaded from the Christchurch City Libraries web site.


Mr CH would be utterly content to spend his days tarting up old pics :)


Addendum

There would appear to be a convenient degree of artistic license in the painting; as Sarndra observed the high-heel shoes of the principal character don't even sink in to the sand. Steven's comment that the image may have been reversed (probably for the sake of compositional balance on the pamphlet cover) appears quite correct; the rounded hills in the distance look very much like the Port Hills and fit well with a southerly aspect if the image is reversed. Below is a reversed copy of the painting (the old bathing sheds are now shown in their correct position) and also a similar southerly view in a postcard of the same era.


1903 Horse Bazaar For Sale


Facing on to Lichfield & Madras Streets and Bedford Row, Harry Matson's 1903 Horse Bazaar is on the market for about $1.7million.

Harry's grandad had founded Henry Matson & Co Ltd in 1862 as Auctioneers, Stock and Station Agents, Wool Brokers, Grain and Produce Merchants but by the time that the horse auction premises were built, most the company's business was being conducted at the Addington Saleyards. Alas Henry junior failed to anticipate that the demand for horses would wane as mechanised transport became increasingly ubiquitous. But situated at the heart of the city's wholesale produce markets, the former bazaar soon became the auction rooms of the produce merchants Davis Trading Company Ltd.

The wholesale produce market eventually moved from the central city and the old auction rooms went into decline, being subsequently used for storage, with the mezzanine occupied as an artist's studio, but in the 1990s the building succumbed to a fire, remaining derelict until 2000, when Peter Beyere renovated the building, with a Christchurch City Council grant, as a café-bar style cabaret dance hall called Maximillian.

Later known as the Legends Bar and more recently as The Bedford, the current lease will terminate in November 2010. The 937 square metre building is now owned by property investor and developer Simon Henry, who trades as Rapaki Properties. Mr Henry is selling his 15 Christchurch properties to concentrate on Auckland industrial property.


Further reading:
TradeMe sale advertisment

Rapaki getting out of town, The Press 16 June 2009

Jun 21, 2009

The Third Worcester Street Bridge


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Among the harder nuts to crack sent to us for identification by Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop was this circa 1877 northerly aspect of the third Worcester Street bridge.

Built in 1869, it was replaced in 1885 by the current bridge. To the far Right can just be glimpsed the back of the Canterbury Assocition's 1850 Lands Office (subsequently the first premises of the Christchurch City Council). To the Right foreground is the fence of the Council's yard. Originally designated as the site for a municipal library, it's now the location of the Captain Robert Falcon Scott statue and the surrounding ornamental garden.


The photograph is dated to approximately 1877 by the telegraph pole just visible at the eastern end of the bridge, which was subsequently fitted with cross trees and cables in 1878 (above).


A similar view in the Winter of 2009

Jun 20, 2009

The Second Theatre Royal


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This is a previously unknown circa 1877 photograph of the second Theatre Royal on the southern side of Gloucester Street East, between Manchester and Colombo Streets. Immediately beyond it is Beatty's Palace Hotel of 1877. Designed by A. W. Simpson and built by John L. Hall of the Canterbury Opera Company, the theatre opened on the 4th of November 1876.

Built by Matthew Allen and Sons, the 1,100 seat theatre replaced an earlier building, which had begun life as the Canterbury Music Hall in 1861. To honour Alexandra, Princess of Denmark and Wales, in 1863 the music hall was renamed as the Princess Theatre, becoming the first Theatre Royal three years later.

The theatre closed in 1908, to be replaced by the extant third Theatre Royal opposite and by 1910 the Palace Hotel had been converted into a cinema and renamed as The King's Theatre. Both buildings were subsequently acquired by The Press, with the street frontages converted into shops and the upper levels renovated as the newspaper's Copy and News Rooms and production departments. Only the upper level facades and the theatre's original roof line survive.


Recently acquired by an Australian construction company as part of an eight building complex, the 1907 Press building in Cathedral Square will be renovated for use as an hotel or offices and a lane precinct created through the property to link Press Lane to the Cathedral Junction vintage tram terminus.

With work projected to commence in October 2009, the company is proposing to construct a new multi-storey building behind the facades of the Palace Hotel and the second Theatre Royal. The artist's rendition below indicates that the pediment's will be restored to their former glory and it is therefore hoped that Queen Victoria's Coat of Arms will once again grace Gloucester Street.


We're greatfully indebted to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop at 108 Hereford Street for the original photograph, which is dated to 1877 by the lack of the stables to the Palace Hotel's Left and there being no Playbills and Posters, which soon began to adorn the theatre's Press Lane side wall (Right).

Jun 18, 2009

Edward Teague Early Lyttelton Photographer


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This is a restoration of a recently discovered circa 1878 photograph by Edward Teague (1843-1928). It depicts a family of four in front of their early Lyttelton cottage, probably in the vicinity of upper Selwyn Road, where Teague is recorded to have been living in that time. Below is another photograph of a Lyttelton house by Teague that is dated from the same period.


English by birth, but an Australian from the age of four months, Edward Teague is recorded as a gold miner at Waipori in the Tuapeka district in April 1867. Bankrupt two years later, in 1872 he married and established a photographic studio in the same town. By 1874 he was recorded as a photographer at Balclutha, where he also carried on the business of a Tobacconist and Hairdresser.

At the end of 1878 Teague relocated with his wife and three children to Lyttelton, occupying photographic premises in residential Selwyn Road until 1881, when he moved to Canterbury Street. By 1885 he is recorded as the proprieter of the London Portrait Rooms on London Street, with a further move (possibly residential) to Oxford Street in 1886.

By the following year he was bankrupt again and had moved to Westport. After a short sojourn in that township the family moved on to Greymouth, then returned to Australia in 1888.

By 1897 he was again recorded as a photographer at Greymouth, but had left New Zealand by early in the following year, establishimg himself as a photographer at Zeehan in Western Tasmania. Sill living in that town 1913, he is recorded as being a 72 year-old Miner. He died at Launceston on the 8th of October 1928 in his 85th year.


Also probably dating from the late 1870s is the only other known landscape photograph by Edward Teague. In a westerly view of Lyttelton's inner harbour, it depicts Dampier's Bay, then a popular bathing beach. The bay succumbed to reclamation in 1881 and two years later the extant graving or dry dock was built in the vicinity to the Left of the photograph.

Edward Teague kept no samples of his photography and apart from one photograph taken of his wife and her three sisters, no examples of his work remain with family members. But although business acumen may not have been among his strong points and churning out portrait cards may not have allowed much room for artistic expression, his rare landscapes attest to a genuine talent for composition and the use of light. Accordingly, he well deserves recognition for his contributions to early New Zealand photography.

Edward Teague specialised in producing cartes de visite in his Lyttelton studio. There are three examples known to be held by the National Museum of New Zealand, but they are not available on-line. A further eight of his cartes de visite can be viewed on the Early Canterbury Photographers web site

We're greatfully indebted to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop at 108 Hereford Street, Christchurch for the top photograph, which precipitated this article and also to Heather Bray of Dunedin for the biographical details of her great great Uncle.

Addendum

Yesterday, some cattle were being driven along Oxford street, Lyttelton, when one of them, being headed, turned into Mr Teague's (photographer) shop. Mr Teague, who was absent at the time, came up promptly, but the bull blocking the way, he could not effect an entrance. Mr Garforth, who happened to be on the spot, managed to get into the gallery, and, at no small risk to himself, seized the animal by the head and backed him out, fortunately before he managed to do any damage.
The Star newspaper 18 October 1883

Jun 17, 2009

The 1878 Destruction of the Second A1 Hotel


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At 2.15 am on the 23rd of January 1878 the four year old second A1 Hotel on the south-east corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets burnt down. The short-lived 12 bedroom room hotel had replaced an earlier building dating from 1859 and was soon rebuilt in a two storey reincarnation that would survive until 1935, being replaced by the Beath's department store, now known as The Crossings bus terminus.

The fire commenced in the back of the Colombo Street premises of J. Barrett, hairdresser, quickly consuming the adjacent premises of Roberts, the watchmaker. Flames then made their way through windows in a brick party wall of the A1 Hotel. Within three hours the three storey hotel and its stable at the rear were completely destroyed. The hotel building was insured for £2,300, with stock valued at £300, furniture £800, and fixtures at £20.

The back of the adjacent 1860 Argyle House (Left) on Cashel Street, premises of the draper George Low Beath (1827-1914), were destroyed, and the stock in the front of the shop damaged, but the business survived to become, over the next sixty years, one of the city's largest and most renowned department stores.

Restored here, this is only the third known photograph in which the second A1 Hotel appears and we're greatfully indebted to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop at 108 Hereford Street for the extremely rare original. Thanks also to Early Canterbury Photographers for the extensive research.

Addenda

The Star, 23 April 1873,

City Improvements. — The great activity in building which commenced about 18 months ago continues with increased rather than diminished vigour. Scarcely a week elapses without a new building for business purposes being commenced in the city, and there are perhaps more improvements of this kind on the tapis now than there has been at anytime during the period mentioned. It is scarcely possible to particularise them all in one notice, but a few of them may be adverted to. To commence with the A1 Hotel, it may be stated that the present building, the main features of which are a low roof and a superfluity of gables, is about to be replaced by a very handsome hotel, designed by Mr Jacobsen. The Cashel Street front will be 49 feet and the Colombo Street 51 feet, the height of the walls to the top of the parapet being 29 feet.

A Grecian style of architecture has been adopted for the street elevations, and it has been so worked out as to produce a very excellent effect. On the ground-floor there are two doors and three sets of large plate-glass windows in Cashel Street, one set with door being so arranged that 14ft of the frontage may be let as a shop. There is a large door at the corner of the two streets leading into the public bar, and on the Colombo Street frontage there are two triple windows of plate glass, a double door, and two single plate glass windows beyond. On the upper floor there are five large plate glass windows looking into each street, flanked with pilasters and surmounted by pediments, a heavy cornice and handsome parapet marking the summit of the walls.

The cellarage will consist of an excavation 49 feet by 20 feet. On the ground floor there will be a public bar 23 feet by 14 feet, with three entrances, kitchen, larder, sitting room, hall, two bar parlors, and private bar, which is to be very elegantly fitted up with panel work and large mirrors on the London principle. On the upper floor, there will be a private sitting room, twelve bedrooms and a bathroom. All the party walls will be of brick, but the fronts elevation will be executed in wood. When the building is erected, it will make a great improvement in the appearance of this part of the city, which will be further increased by three brick shops Mr Pratt is about to erect on the opposite corner of the street...



The Star, 2 March 1874

NEW BUILDINGS. - The A1 Hotel, which has a somewhat primitive appearance in comparison with some of its neighbours, is about to be replaced by a new and more pretentious structure, Mr Jacobsen being the architect. A tender for carrying out the work according to the plans prepared by Mr Jacobsen, and already described, has been accepted, and the contract is to be entered upon forthwith. The cost of the building will be considerably over £2,000. It is also probable that some improvements will be carried out on the opposite side of Colombo street, where it is said that Messrs Hobday and Jobberns propose to extend their premises about forty feet in a southerly direction. The extension, if carried out, will be of brick with stuccoed front, and will be a very welcome substitution for the small wooden shops which now occupy the ground. (the Hobday and Jobberns building burnt down on the 3rd of October 1888)



The Sun, 17 June, 1933 (excerpt from an article by R. E. Green)

There is much that is still fresh in my memory that I could relate regarding this locality, but I must pass on to the corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets, where stood the original A1 hotel. Perhaps it will interest many if I go back to when the original building on this corner was erected. It was in 1859 that Mr James Mann had erected what he called “Mann’s A1 Christchurch Restaurant."

It was first opened for that business on December 14, 1859, by Mann and his wife, who conducted the house on first-class lines. There was a commercial room and a special room for women, both supplied with stationery and papers, and there was a mail bag for the convenience of patrons. Mann had also a large display advertisement in the local paper setting forth his bill of fare and the hours for meals. A special feature was “Tripe on Tuesdays and Fridays, and supper from 8 to 10 p.m., and a change of fare each day. Mann and his wife kept their house in perfect order, and worked hard to make it a success.
In May, 1861, Mann was granted a wine and beer licence for his restaurant. Then, in 1862, James Hair, who became the proprietor, was granted a publican’s licence, which he held till 1863. In 1864 James Blake and William Lippard were the proprietors. In 1865 Lippard went out of the business and Blake had the house to himself. In 1866 Blake’s licence was renewed, and be retained it till well on into the 1870s.

The hotel had often been threatened by fire. The first occasion I remember was May 23, 1861, when a fire broke out in Wilmer’s Brewery, behind what is now the east end of Beath’s, This fire cleared a space right up to the A1, but it was saved from destruction. Again on December 26, 1869, another more serious fire broke out almost in the same place in a straw store. For want of water this fire grew to large proportions; however, one length of hose was taken on to the roof of the A1, where three firemen sat hose in hand and swathed in blankets, and by sheer doggedness they subdued the outbreak right under their feet. One fireman was overcome and fell to the ground, and was taken away unconscious, but he recovered next day. The A1 was again saved. It was this fire that made the Christchurch Volunteer Fire Brigade famous.

The A1 had another blaze nearly, but seemed to be immune from fire, and held its own until 1873. This was when Matthew Allen and Sons came in and entered into a contract with Mr James Blake to pull down the original A1 and build on the same site a three-story building to the plans of J. S. M. Jacobsen, architect. At that time I was just finishing my apprenticeship, and it was in the joinery shop that it fell to my lot and that of another young fellow named D. H. Brown to make all the sashes for that three-story A1 hotel which, however, had but a short life, for it was burned down on January 23, 1878, together with two shops facing Colombo Street...

Jun 15, 2009

Epitaph: Captain Thomas Nicholson Clarkson (1837-1909)


Carved in stone in Christchurch's principal square is a monument to the "Canterbury Pilgrims" of the "First Four Ships" of 1850. There are no monuments to the thousand or so settlers who had come before them in the previous fourteen years.

Tom Clarkson celebrated his third birhday just four days before the Bolton dropped anchor in Port Nicholson on the 30th of April 1840. It had been an arduous five and a half month voyage from London for his parents and their five children. William, his father and a former Royal Navy seaman, set himself up as a boatman on Lambton Quay, ferrying passengers and their luggage from the vessels that lay off the nascent township that would eventually become the Capital city.



With the family increased to ten children, in 1849 the Clarksons moved to Lyttelton, where Tom's father built a cottage above the southern end of Dampier's Bay on the western side of the port. Seen above in this detail from an early 1852 sketch, their home was reached by steps cut into the bank above the beach. Assisted by his elder sons, William continued in the trade of a boatman and their sailing cutter can be seen lying below the steps.


By 1852 fifteen year-old Tom Clarkson was ferrying settlers from Lyttelton to Ferrymead (above). Situated at the estuary of the Heathcote River, coach and carrier's services would then convey the passengers and their luggage to Christchurch. He would go on to enjoy a considerable reputation as a Pilot for vessels crossing the notorious Sumner Bar and destined for the wharves of the Port of Christchurch at what is now suburban Woolston.

In 1857, at the age of twenty, Tom gained a Master's Certificate and also married Caroline Brighting at the Christchurch Registrar's Office. About this time his parents and elder brother took up farming beside the Heathcote River and Tom and Caroline set up home in the family's Dampier's Bay cottage. Here they began a family that eventually included seven sons and seven daughters, all of whom were born at Lyttelton.

For the next three decades Tom Clarkson commanded a number of Lyttelton sailing vessels, originally for John & Peter Cameron of Norwich Quay, then William Langdown (1825-1903) and then for the almost forgotten Christchurch shipowner Charles Wesley Turner (1834–1906). In a maritime career spanning six decades Tom lost only a single vessel. She was the schooner Triumph, which was driven ashore at Kaikoura on the 3rd of February 1868, when her moorings gave way in a gale.


Titan 1866-1901

Mana 1890-1948

Subsequent to the loss of the Shaw, Savill & Albion Line's 1,180 ton emigrant ship Lyttelton in Timaru Harbour in June 1886, the port needed a new Pilot, who also acted as the Deputy Harbour Master, and in October Tom Clarkson was appointed. He is subsequently recorded as Master of the paddle tugs Titan and Mana (above). Promoted to that port's Harbour Master in 1887, it would be a post that he would fulfill, without mishap, until 1909.


Born at London on the 26th of April 1837, Captain Thomas Nicholson Clarkson is recorded as having been a man of a quiet and retiring dispostion, with a proud and haughty wife. He died at his home on Le Cren's Terrace (now The Terrace), Timaru at 6.30 am on the 27th of September 1909, aged 73 years.

Tom Clarkson's pioneering parents William and Sarah are buried in Lyttelton's Church of England Cemetery. It was estimated that by 1989 they had about four thousand descendants.

Jun 10, 2009

Epitaph: John Grubb 1817-1898


As a member of the Canterbury Association's thirty-five strong initial work party, John Grubb, a thirty-two year old Scottish Carpenter arrived at Lyttelton on the 2nd of July, 1849.

His first responsibilty was the erection of the five prefabricated dwellings and Blacksmith's shop, carried from Wellington in the hold of the Fair Tasmanian. Three weeks later John commenced the construction of a 46 metre jetty, at which the first emigrants from the Association's chartered sailing ships would arrive 17 months later. Among those passengers were his wife Mary and their three daughters.


Early in the following year John Grubb built an extension across the front of what the historical record appears to indicate as being the 1849 prefabricated cottage of Joseph Thomas, the Principal Surveyor and Acting Agent of the Canterbury Association.

Initially granted a licence to occupy the site at the time when Captain Thomas relocateded to a more substantial dwelling, Grubb subsequently purchased the property for £23, when the set price for a bare section was £12.

By 1864 Mary and John's family included a further seven Lyttelton born children and an additional floor had been added to the 1851 extension.

Situated at 62 London Street, the house (below) remained in the Grubb family until 1961 and was purchased in 2006 by the Christchurch City Council for $260,000. We look forward to its restoration...


The mismanaged Canterbury Association collapsed in 1852 and John Grubb set himself up as a Shipwright on the foreshore (below foreground), in the vicinity of where the defunct second Railway Station now stands. A builder's model of John Grubb's Caledonia, the first vessel built of New Zealand timber and entirely by local industry, is in the collection of Canterbury Heritage.


Born on the 7th of November 1816, the former Mary Stott married John Grubb on the 26th of January 1842. She died at Lyttelton on the 18th of October 1886. Born on the 1st of May 1817 at Ferryport-on-Craig, Fifeshire, John survived his wife by a further twelve years. Lyttelton's oldest resident died in his 82nd year on Saturday, the 19th of February 1898.


The extensive and somewhat folkloric history of the Grubb family and their endeavours are well documented and thus the pioneering John Grubb can be considered as one of the seminal figures in the foundation of our community. That his final resting place in Lyttelton's Canterbury Street Cemetery lies ruined and forgotten might well seem to be a barometric indicator of our current cultural climate.

Jun 9, 2009

Epitaph: George Rhodes 1815-1864


24 year-old Henry Kirk arrived at Lyttleton in December 1863. Establishing himself a brick maker, one of his earliest commissions was to construct a large vault in the town's Anglican cemetery for the Rhodes family of Purau on the south-eastern side of the harbour. The vast monument that rose above it on the steep hill side continues to be amongst the port's most imposing tombs, but for all its grandiosity, only the mortal remains of a single member of that famed Canterbury dynasty lie within.


24 year-old George Rhodes had first come to what would eventually be Canterbury in November 1839, establishing a cattle station at Akaroa before returning to Sydney. Four years later George returned to take charge of land adjacent to his brother William's Banks Peninsula whaling station. The rest of the Rhodes Brothers's story is well documented history, but the only known image of George and his wife Elizabeth is this photograph (below), taken in front of their 1851 farm cottage near Timaru.


George and Elizabeth built an extant stone house (below) at Purau in 1854 and it was here that George died from Typhoid Fever on the 18th of June 1864.


Described by the Canterbury Association's local Agent as that cattle dealer and market gardener, he would be the founder of an immensely wealthly dynasty that would dominate the social life of the province for most of the following century.

But there's seasons in the affairs of families and the Rhodes flogged the Ranch and moved on to the big smoke, leaving poor George to lie alone beneath his neglected monument. Thus it is that in the current era the best known of his descendants is a certain Teddy Tahu Rhodes (below), that imposing 1.96 metre Opera singer and infrequent visitor to the land of his pioneering forebears.

Popdcast: Captain Cook

A 54 minute Aussie ramble that's worth a listen.

Captain James Cook has been central to Australasian history for over two hundred years, but his significance has often been contested. Today we join a symposium at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra with the authors of four new books about James Cook.

What is it about Captain Cook that continues to fascinate writers? He has been the subject of several biographies, and much of his life is well known: his humble origins in Yorkshire, his skill as a cartographer, his shipboard journal, his return voyages to the Pacific and eventual death in Hawaii in 1779.

Recent attention has focused closely on the detail of his life: his emergence as a writer with the Endeavour journal, the real conditions of daily life on board ship, the simultaneous explorations of the French captain Jean de Surville and, crucially, the significance of the eight-day encounter between Cook and the Indigenous people of Botany Bay.

The National Museum of Australia symposium brought together five writers who've taken up the challenge of writing about Cook, to share their views with an enthusiastic Canberra audience.

Jun 8, 2009

An Almost Forgotten Lyttelton Grave


Thomas Rousel Stevenson from Yorkshire had signed on at London in May 1901 as a Greaser aboard the Shaw, Savill & Albion Company's 14 year-old emigrant ship RMS Gothic.

The 7,750 ton steamer (above) had subsequently embarked passengers at Plymouth, before proceeding to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for coal. Well bunkered, the liner headed for Cape Town and then Hobart, before reaching Wellington. She sailed from the Capital on the 6th of June, arriving at Lyttleton on the following morning. Backing into the port's No.5 Wharf (below), she prepared to load chilled meat and butter over the next twelve days for her return to London via Cape Horn, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro.


Granted shore leave, twenty six year-old Thomas was looking forward to visiting friends at Woolston that cold Winter's evening. Taking a train from Lyttelton, he fell from the carriage (in the vicinity below) fracturing his skull. Found later that night, he was taken back to the port, where an operation was performed at the hospital, but he died on the following morning.


In Lyttelton's Anglican cemetery, a Marble tombstone was erected at the expense of the Officers and crew of the Gothic. No longer marking the site of his grave, it's now set into the retaining wall of a path, which passes through the centre of the cemetery.

There is some confusion over Thomas's surname. Rousel, originally meaning a man with red hair, was an Anglo-Norman surname of great distinction and may have been considered somewhat pretentious for a humble engine room Greaser aboard a nondescript emigrant ship.

Lyttelton's Anglican cemetery on upper Canterbury Street was established in 1849, with the earliest burials predating the arrival of the first of the Canterbury Association's chartered emigrant ships.

An Elderly Visitor to Port Lyttelton


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Continuing to enjoy her 83 year working career, the 49 metre floating crane Hikitea arrived in the port at 1.35 am on the 5th of June, 2009.

Departing from her home port of Wellington for the first time since her 82 day delivery voyage from Glasgow in 1926, the Hikitea will spend a week at Lyttelton, undergoing hull plate replacement and tailshaft repairs in the graving dock.


Owned by the Maritime Heritage Trust since 2006, the 746 ton floating crane was built by Sir William Arrol and Company Ltd, whose greatest claim to fame is probably the 1894 construction of London's iconic Tower Bridge.



Photo credit: Second photograph Kiwi Frenzy On Location, third to fifth photographs Cranes Today Magazine

Jun 6, 2009

2009 Heritage Grants Illustrated


On Friday, the 5th of June the Christchurch City Council issued a press release announcing the Heritage Grants and Covenants Committee's grants for 2009. We illustrate and quote from that media statement. Our editorial comments are in blue.


Just over $27,000 has been granted for conservation work on Acland House. The house was built around 1893 and was named after the Chairman of the school board when the hostel was established in 1921. The building is a group three listed building in the City Plan.

Situated at 85 Papanui Road, Merivale, and renamed to commemorate Sir Hugh Thomas Dyke Acland (1874-1956), the house is a residential facility for approximately 90 Christchurch Girls' High School pupils.




The committee has granted $3,500 to install protective glass in a cell at Addington Prison to cover sketches done by inmates. Addington Prison was built to relieve congestion at the Lyttelton Gaol, the City’s first and only penal institution at the time. It is a good example of a Victorian jail and was constructed in 1872. The jail is also of significance for its connection to Edward Seager, who was Canterbury’s first police sergeant, Addington Gaol’s first gaoler, and Sunnyside Hospital’s first warden. The grant follows an earlier one, made in June last year, of $50,000 for internal and external maintenance and restoration work.

Built to the neo-Gothic design of the Architect Benjamin Mountfort in 1874, the building replaced an earlier prison in Armagh Street. Closed in 1999, the original cell block has been a Backpacker's Hostel since 2006.





A grant of nearly $8,000 will be used towards repainting the exterior of the Highpara Apartment building in High Street. The three storey building is one of a number of listed premises on High Street that contribute significantly to the streetscape of this inner city precinct. In the 1980s the first and second floors of the building were converted to residential use, providing 27 warehouse-style apartments.

Built in 1884 as a block of retail premises, the current name derives from the Para Rubber Company having been a long term tenant of the corner shop.




BEFORE


AFTER

A commercial building at 68 Manchester has attracted a grant of just over $8,000. The two storey, group-three-listed building was designed by Samuel Farr in 1877 and is one of a number of listed buildings on Manchester Street that contribute to the low-rise classical streetscape of the area.





A grant of $26,000 has been allocated to work on a Cunningham Terrace, Lyttelton, house. The house is an early colonial dwelling built in 1874 for Peter Cunningham, a landowner and grain exporter who was a founder member of the Lyttelton Harbour Board and an original shareholder in the Canterbury Club. The house is an elegant two storey triple gabled timber dwelling with decorative finials and bargeboards. The grant will be used for replacing the roof, exterior painting, and replacing rotted timber.

Purchased from the Honourable John Thomas Peacock, Peter Cunningham was the owner of Peacock's Wharf, over which his house enjoyed a commanding view. Now much enlarged, and the dock for the inter-island RoRo cargo ferries, the port's second jetty is more prosaically renamed as No 7 Wharf.





The Piko Wholefoods building at 229 Kilmore Street is a two storey brick building built in 1905. A grant of $10,000 will be used for maintenance on the brick, stone and timber work.

Originally the retail premises of a Painter and Paperhanger, the upper floor was first occupied by James Wyn Irwin, promoter of the Shorthand dictation method and Australasian representative of The Gregg Correspondence School. The building has been occupied by the Piko Wholefoods Coöperative since 1981.





A grant of nearly $6,000 has been approved for work on the Cashmere Hills Presbyterian Church at 2 Macmillan Avenue. The church was designed by Cecil Wood in 1926 and built in 1929 of Port Hills basalt with a slate roof. A substantial amount of the grant will be used towards restoration of five stained glass windows and installation of protective glass shields to the north and east facing windows.