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.

7 comments:

Jayne said...

All of those buildings are worthy of the heritage grants - impressive reno on the Manchester Street building!

Sarndra said...

I agree Jayne and thanks Mr CH for adding this post. I now rely on you for all the updated news LOL! It's great. Especially glad to see the help for the Piko shop. My now deaceased ex father in law used to provide the shop with goods in the early 1980's.

My g g aunt Ethel's daughter Betty [born 1915 now deceased] told me many many years back she could recall seeing her mother waving from the second story of a building that she thought was the one Piko's is in, except that it was a maternity or convelescence home as it was to do with birthing, she thought her mother must have lost a child. Any homes in this area do you think? I have read a lot of papers from 'Papers Past' and gleaned homes that i have put on my site at http://tinyurl.com/chch-nursing-homes but haven't come across one specifically close to Piko's.

As an aside, my g g aunt Ethel [nee Arbuckle] was married to Percy Carr ROBINSON who was a chaffeur and i just discovered his employer must have been Mrs A Q Townsend the well known Christchurch personality as she named him in her will...news article makes for interesting reading http://tinyurl.com/percy-c-robinson. Also, Percy and Ethel lived in McMillan Ave, Cashmere for many years.

Cheers

kuaka said...

No funding for Aranui, Sydenham, Waltham etc heritage sites, surprise, surprise.

Of working class areas, only the Addington prison (keep the hoi polloi at bay) gets a paltry sum and then only because of the "notable" architect & gaoler, not so much the inmates whose lives & places are worth remembering too.

Piko's grant doesn't count for it is for the comfortable middle class do-gooders of the organic, wholefood movement who've now become socially conventional (and all credit & kudos to them for their vision & practice!)

One also is struck by the pathetically small sums involved, barely chump change in many cases to add good locks & sturdy doors to slow the arsonists down.

Thanks again, Christchurch, for reminding me of one of the reasons I abandoned you decades ago for wider, less class-ridden horizons.

Marcus Castell said...

Currently there's half a billion in grandiose property development projects, but only $90,000 for heritage conservation - the cronies and their bean counters are milking a docile cash cow for all it's worth. No wonder a significant third of the city's population took wings.

As a teenager, Mr CH left a fancy Christchurch school in pursuit of a proper education in Europe. Returning 35 years later, he found that every former classmate with even a modicum of talent had also joined the exodus. Only politeness forbids him from commenting on the dull witted residue that now comprise the old boy network.

kuaka said...

Always a gentleman, Mr CH!

Marcus Castell said...

One feigns an Olympian disdain for Christchurch convention with the underdog's suspicion of authority, finding the lack of pretension in Aranui more acceptable than that of the Merivale Ranger; a mean little mouse bred on cheese rind and broken biscuits and the nutritionless, platitudinous parings of a grocer's mind :)

Taryn Spice said...

My brother had one of those apartments above para rubber in the late 80's, such great memories of sitting out on the balcony as a 13 year old with my my other older brothers and watching the night life of Christchurch. Thanks for the trip down memory lane....��