Christchurch 1880: Canterbury Provincial Council & Supreme Court Buildings

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This is an 1880 photograph of the Canterbury Provincial Council buildings on the east side of Durham Street North. Built between 1857 and 1865, they are seen in this north-easterly view from Gloucester Street West, near to the junction with Cambridge Terrace.

The only purpose-built New Zealand provincial government buildings still in existence, with the 1876 abolition of the provincial governments, the buildings were in use as offices of central government departments by the time that this photograph was taken.

A regular subject for photographers, this is not a particulary important historical photo, but for one significant exception. With its central tower rising above the roof line, to the extreme Left can be seen the Great Hall of the Supreme Court (below). The Court building is partially obscured by the workshops of the Christchurch City Council at the corner of Armagh Street, which were replaced in 1890 by the extant Canterbury Society of Arts gallery.


Built in 1869 to the design of Alexander Lean (1824-1893), the stone Supreme Court building complimented the Canterbury Provincial Council Chamber, which is widely considered to be the finest example of the medieval Gothic style in the Southern Hemisphere. Similar to the Provincial Council Chamber, a public gallery at the eastern end seated 200 juridicial spectators.


In the early 1880s the 12.3 by 15.35 metre hall acquired substantial extensions along two sides, as seen above in this circa 1885 photograph, taken from across the Avon River at Victoria Square.

The Supreme Court extensions were progressively demolished from 1974 to make way for the current Law Courts building (below), with the 115 year-old Great Hall succumbing in 1984 to what must be one of the city's worst acts of cultural vandalism.


An aside: in 1849 the Surveyor Edward Jollie laid out a rectangular Common bounded by Colombo, Armagh, Durham and Kilmore Streets. Advised by its Solicitor, Henry Sewell (later Prime Minister of New Zealand), that it was unlawful to do so, the Canterbury Provincial Council subverted parts of the public reserve for the construction of buildings. Thus it is that the property titles now occupied by the Law Courts, along with the Salvation Army, the Town Hall and the Crowne Plaza Hotel, might still be deemed unlawful.

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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.

Christchurch's A.1. Hotel 1857-1935

Founded in January 1851, the Lyttelton Times newspaper also published an evening edition known as The Star from 1868. More widely read in Sydenham than Fendalton in its heyday, the evening edition lingers on as a twice weekly giveaway, supported by no more than advertising and Christchurch City Council advertorials.

Sad to say that its reduced circumstances would seem to no longer allow for the expense of journalstic expertise, as further indicated by the above photograph, published under the heading The Way We Were on the 20th of May 2009, and erroneously captioned "The intersection of Cashel St and Colombo St in 1860, with Blake's Hotel and the A.I Hotel around the corner."

For the sake of the historical record we proffer the following alternative caption:

The A.1. Hotel was founded in 1857 on the Southeast corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets, a site now occupied by The Crossing bus terminus in the renovated former Beath's department store building of 1935. The original gabled hotel (below) was replaced in 1874 by the second A1 Hotel, a three storey building, which burnt down four years later.

In 1879 it was rebuilt as the two storey structure depicted in the above photograph. James Blake is known to have been the Publican of the A.1. Hotel by 1865, but there's no known reference to a Blake's Hotel in any local archive.

The Colombo Street facade of James Blake's first A.1. Hotel to the Left, with the Mechanic's Hotel to the Right and the Watchmaker's shop of Thomas Charles Barnard adjoining the A.1. Hotel.

By 1915 the ground floor of the third A.1. Hotel had been converted into shops


Beath's 1935 department store extension was originally designed to have six floors, but The Great Depression of the 1930s got in the way.


Beath's department store reincarnated as The Crossing bus terminus in 2003.

Historically Important Photograph Indentified

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A recent indentification enquiry from a reader has resulted in the discovery of a photograph of considerable signficance to historians of Victorian photography. By Nelson King Cherrill, it is a photograph of Oakford, his Christchurch home, and was purchased on a New Zealand Internet auction site for eight dollars, which is estimated to be approximately one hundredth of its value in an international market.

One of the most respected names in Victorian photography, Cherrill (1845-1916) is first recorded as active in that profession in 1865. Aged 32, with his wife and two children he emigrated to New Zealand in July 1876. An internationally renowned writer and lecturer on photography, Cherrill set about making a local name for himself, becoming a Warden of the pro-cathedral (St Michael and All Angels church), Honorary Secretary of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury and a Christcurch City Councillor from 1879. After five apparently successful years, Cherrill closed his Cashel Street studio and returned to England. It has been suggested that, as a big fish in a very small pond, he lacked professional challenge in an obscure provincial backwater.

Situated upon a sandy hillock on a 20 hectare rural block on the southern side of lower Riccarton Road, Oakford had been built in 1857 by Henry Joseph Hall (1837-1897). Hall appears to have also owned the adjacent block, which now comprises most of the Riccarton shopping precinct, but was originally known as Hall's Township.

Advertised for sale or to let in the Lyttelton Times, as located over Hagley Park, near the Riccarton Railway Crossing, with nine principal rooms, Nelson Cherrill sold Oakford in 1881 for £650 to George Low Beath (1827-1914), a Draper and Outfitter also of Cashel Street.

The last owner of Oakford was John Heaton Rhodes (1888-1960), lawyer, chairman of the Christchurch Press Company Ltd. and a grandson George Rhodes (1816-1864), an early Banks Peninsula farmer.



The much enlarged and somewhat modified Oakford homestead was demolished in 1965 to make way for the development of the Riccarton Village Inn motel in Mandeville Street (which was originally known as Chinamen’s Lane).

Donated to the Riccarton Borough by Jack Rhodes, the Mandeville Reserve on the eastern corner of Riccarton Road and Mandeville Street survives as the last 888 square metres of his 3.2 hectare garden.

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Photo Credits

Top: circa 1880 photograph by Nelson King Cherrill (1845-1916), courtesy of Early Canterbury Photographers.

Bottom: circa 1960, illustration from Riccarton, the founding borough: a short history, by Ian McBride, edited by Malcolm Hopwood, prepared for the Riccarton/Wigram Community Board, Christchurch City Council, 1994.

New Zealand's Oldest Shop?

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Long forgotten as such, this brick building survives as the city's second oldest commercial premises on the Eastern side of Colombo Street in the block between Gloucester and Armagh Streets.

Built in 1857, it was acquired by pioneer merchant George Gould two years later. Gould was the local agent for Burrow's Boot & Shoe factory of Cookham, the English hobnail boot manufacturer, and named his new premises Cookham House. His family lived above the shop from where they enjoyed an unobstructed Southerly view to Cathedral Square, which at that time was being levelled.

Gould prospered and moved on, the building became the expanded premises of the neighbouring Grocer Frank A. Cook. Later it would become a cafe and is now occupied by a Chemist on the ground floor, with Sergeant Pepper's Steakhouse above.

See where this picture was taken