Where is the Statue of Apollo Now?

"Yesterday one of the largest blooks of stone from any of the local quarries was delivered at Mr D. Reese's yard, St Asaph Street west, from the White Rock quarries. The stone, which is 10 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 1 inch by 2 feet 4 inches, is to be carved into a figure of Apollo, to be placed on the pediment of Messrs Milner and Thompson's new music warehouse, now in course of erection in High street."

The Star, 27 February, 1883.

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"The elevation of the stone figure of Apollo to the pediment of Messrs Milner and Thompson's new music warehouse was the occasion of some excitement, and caused a considerable crowd to collect in front of the building this afternoon. In order to provide against the musical divinity suffering any personal injury during the ascent he was enclosed in a sort of cage, and protected by swathing bands of canvas. The figure was successfully hoisted and lowered into position about 2.30 p.m."

The Star, 16 April 1883

In 1874 Robert Henry Thompson (1835-1915) and Benjamin Milner established the Canterbury Music Depot on the north-east corner of High & Cashel Streets.

Manufacturers and Importers of Pianos and Organs and General Musical Warehousemen, they prospered to the extent that nine years later they were able to erect a three storey stone building next door. For the pediment of their new premises they commissioned a statue of Apollo, the god of music from classical antiquity.


The business continued to expand and in 1895 moved to much larger premises on the corner of Bedford Row and Manchester Streets (that building, next to the former Majestic Theatre, barely survives in a derelict condition, behind a 1930s facade).

It's likely that the Apollo statue was moved with the company, but was not placed on the pediment of the newer showrooms. The circa 1930 photograph below shows Milner and. Thompson's 1883 building, with the statue removed, occupied by the photographic supplier and chemist Wallace and Company.


By the 1980s the High Street building had fallen prey to the Southland Building Society. Below: stripped of its cornice and some of the architectural ornamentation, the stone facade was painted in garish colours.


Surviving into its third century, the old building is currently the premises of Quest, purveyors of lifestyle attire and accessories for those of the alipne persuasions.


Thanks to Sarndra for asking the question, for which the above is the answer.

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.

Same View Over 158 Years

Covering a period of 158 years, these are five southerly views of Colombo Street from the vicinity of Victoria Square.

1851

1868

1882

1949

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.

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

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

A Rare Taphophilic Survivor at Ashburton

Reminiscent of the South African Veld or the American West, wooden fences around graves were once a common sight in New Zealand. As the nineteenth century drew to a close the availabilty of wrought iron railings marked a change in tastes for funereal ornamentation, but the need to recycle iron for the wars of the twentieth century saw many of these elaborate railings consigned to the Smelter's furnace.

Above is an ornate example of wooden fenced grave from the 1880s, which barely survives in the Ashburton Cemetery. A relic from an era when child mortality was commonplace, it surrounds the graves of the four children of William and Mary Ullyatt of Methven.

Anna, Emma, John and George Ullyatt died between 1883 and 1887, but their farming parents retired to Christchurch and were buried in the Linwood Cemetery in 1917 and 1924.

It is to be hoped that this extremely rare survivor of Canterbury's heritage will be restored before it finally falls prey to the elements.

Addendum

Above: designated in October, 2005 for restoration by the Christchurch City Council is the fenced grave of Walter Powell Beauchamp in the Linwood Cemetery. A Clerk of New Brighton Road, 20 year-old Beauchamp died on the 2nd of April 1888 after only eight years in the colony.

Made of Totara, the remains of the contemporaneous wooden fence had undergone partial restoration by April 2009 (below), but the original pickets have yet to be replaced.

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Sarndra's lovely photograph of the wooden fenced grave of a child and her grandmother in Auckland's Waikumete Cemetery.

This is a good example of how the fenced graves depicted above might be restored. Enclosing flowering shrubs would add colour and also attract birds to otherwise rather drab and utilitarian cemeteries.

Landscaping our historic cemeteries as parks of remembrance could make them more attractive to the public and quite possibly circumvent the ongoing problem of vandalism.

Photo credits: Sandra Lees and Early Canterbury Photographers

Wakatu: first chapter in a family saga of maritime loss

The last of the Lyttelton to Wellington passenger ferries to make the 280 kilometere voyage via Kaikoura ended her eventful 45 year career very close to where she had previously attended the tragic wreck of notable predecessor. Her demise would be the first chapter in a tale of the loss of two inter-island ferries by father and son captains


At the beginning of November 1878 John Currie Moutray and Robert Martin Crosbie of Nelson's Soho Foundry laid the keel of a cargo-passenger vessel for the local shipping enterprise of the Cross brothers and Burchard Franzen. Completed for a contract price of £6,000 and christened with the Maori name for Nelson Bay, the Wakatu was launched on the evening of the 6th of July 1879 from the foundry's Bridge Street slipway, near the Nelson Post Office.

In as much as Moutray and Crosbie had previously built a replacement engine and boiler for Captain G. Cross's paddle steamer Result, it may be surmised that they also constructed the compound steam engines for the propulsion and steam winches of the new vessel. With a boiler pressure of 65 pounds of steam per square inch, her engine developed a nominal 25 horsepower, therby maintaining a service speed of 9 knots.

Built for Cross and Company's Nelson to Wellington and Wanganui service, the 90 ton (78 tons net) steamship, was originally 32.23 metres in length, with a beam of 5.5 metres and a draft of only 1.8 metres. Up to a hundred tons of freight could be carried in her 6 metre deep hold. Fitted out at the Corporation Wharf as gaff rigged schooner, she could initially accommodate about 40 first class passengers. With the main saloon aft, there was also a seperate ladies' cabin amidships on the main deck. Further accommodation for second-class passengers was forward on the lower deck.

In the second week of November 1879, under the command of Captain Charles Evans, the Wakatu commenced her maiden voyage to Wanganui, returning to her port of registry via the capital a week later. But her first career would come to an abrupt end little more than two years later when she was stranded while crossing the Patea bar. An attempt to get her off with the evening tide failed, and she crashed violently against the cliff, a portion of which fell upon the ship. The hull therby being stove in, the Wakatu filled with water and became a total loss.


Sold to Levin & Company of Wellington, the vessel underwent a major reconstruction. With the hull extended by 4.25 metres and the gross displacement increased to 157 tons, the main deck passenger accommodation was significantly enlarged (above). Transferring her registry to the capital, William Levin put the rebuilt steamer on the Wellington to Lyttelton run, a service that the Wakatu would perform with reliability for longer than any other vessel.


Wakatu at her usual Lyttelton berth on the Ferry wharf.
In an omen of what would be her own and adjacent fate, Wakatu attended the wreck of the Lyttelton bound 228 ton coastal steamer Taiaroa, which went ashore just to the north of Waipapa Point on the Kaikoura coast in April 1886. With only 14 saved, 34 lives were lost and the Wakatu returned to Lyttelton with an awful cargo of coffins.

Apart from a night time collision with the steamer Storm off Motunau Island in March 1909, which left a gaping hole in her bow, the next two decades were fairly uneventful for the Wakatu. The highlight being when the Australian Poet Henry Lawson and his wife took passage aboard her in May 1897. Excitement returned in the early days of the First World War when she was was fired upon by the guns in the fortress on Ripapa Island in Lyttelton Harbour for failing to observe the War Regulations.


In the later ownership of the Wellington based Wakatu Shipping Company, she encountered her final mishap in thick fog at 5.00 am on the 6th of September 1924, while sailing from Wellington to Kaikoura and Lyttelton. An unusually strong current threw her high onto the beach on the northern side of Waipapa Point, very close to the wreck of the Taiaroa (below).


The remains of the Taiaroa as seen from the stranded Wakatu
The Wakatu was under the command of her regular master, Captain David Robertson, who was exonerated by the Court of Inquiry, which found that when the weather came up thick, with fine rain, a south-east wind, and a heavy swell, the vessel was at least four miles off shore, which was a safe position; that in altering the course at 2:30 a.m., and 2:40 a.m., the master adopted a safe and prudent course which, under ordinary circumstances, would have carried the Wakatu well clear of Waipapa Point, and that the casualty was caused by an unusually strong set owing to the action of the wind and tide, and to the fact that the vessel was lightly laden.


The crew of the Wakatu still aboard the stranded vessel.
Four years later Captain Robertson would be dismissed for trying to conceal another mishap, when his next command went ashore on Banks Peninsula. In a curious quirk of fate, David Robertson's son Captain Gordon Robertson would be in command of the inter-island ferry Wahine, when she sank in April 1968, with a loss of 51 lives.


Holed and buckled near the stern, the ships' resting place was so far up on the beach as to make salvage impossible, but her location greatly simplified the recovery of the cargo. Several attempts were made to refloat the ship, but were unsuccessful, and she was abandoned as a total loss on September the 12th.

Only a few hundred yards from the road, the Wakatu was still a photographic opportunity in March 1927.

Subsequently cut up for scrap where she lay, only her keel now remains to be seen on the beach.


Long supplanted by larger and faster vessels in the Lyttelton-Wellington service and the development of road and rail transport along the South Island's north-eastern coast, the loss of the Wakatu marked the end of Kaikoura as any more than a fishing harbour, but the long lost vessel is still commemorated in the name of that township's Wakatu Quay.

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Many thanks to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop, the late Frederick William Weidner (Kaikoura Star photographer), Graham Stewart, the Nelson Examiner newspaper, the National Library of New Zealand, et al.

Historic 1879 Christchurch Photograph Identified

Unidentified until now is a photograph that will be familiar to many with an interest in Christchurch history.

Taken in Cathedral Square in May 1879, it shows a large wooden building in the process of being relocated. In the background is the newly completed Government Building, subsequently the Chief Post Office and now the tourist information centre.

During that era pressure for commercial redevelopment within the inner city saw many dwellings from the earliest residential areas moved to what are now the inner suburbs, where they continue to survive into the twenty-first century.

Shown above is the 1868 Baptist church on its way from Hereford Street to Oxford Terrace. Built for £272 on the site now occupied by the central Police Station, it was relocated next to the subsequent Baptist Tabernacle (below), which continues to occupy the south-east corner of Madras Street and Oxford Terrace.


Enlarged upon its new site, the church re-opened on the 29th of June 1879, becoming the Baptist Sunday School on the completion of its neo-classic replacement in 1882. Damaged by fire in 1903, the front part of the 1868 church was replaced in brick (below). Aerial photographs indicate that the Sunday School was demolished in the early 1970s.

Photo Credits: top; Christchurch Star newspaper archives, center; Early Canterbury Photographers, Bottom; Frederick George Radcliffe (1863-1923).

The Limes Private Hospital 1880-1963

1883 NORTHERLY VIEW ACROSS VICTORIA SQUARE

A recent response from a regular reader concerned the last address of her GGG grandad John Kennedy, a 70 year old News Vendor who was living at 84 Kilmore Street, when he died in 1918. The reader understood that this was probably a house almost opposite the 1972 Town Hall. However the photographic record indicates that the presumed location continued to be occupied by early commercial premises until 1958 and further research indicated that number 84 was actually on the southern side of Kilmore Street on the site now occupied by the Town Hall's auditorium.

With a southern boundary on Cambridge Terrace, John Plank had built a two storey wooden boarding house facing Victoria Square on the quarter acre section by 1862. But in 1880 it was demolished and across the site and its adjoining section (originally occupied by the Blacksmith William Gosling), the newly arrived Dr James Irving built a substantial brick hospital, which was soon extended with a new wing to the east. The Limes Private Hospital derived its name from the trees which occupied the Cambridge Terrace river bank and although informally referred to as being in Victoria Square, the official address of The Limes Hospital Ltd was 84 Kilmore Street.

At the time of John Kennedy's demise the hospital was also providing care for invalid and convalescent soldiers from the Great War of 1914-1919.

The Scottish James Irving had arrived at Lyttelton as the ship's doctor aboard the Shaw Savill Line's sailing vessel Crusader in 1879, with eight children (subsequently enlarged to six sons and five daughters) and a Nanny. Prominent in the Social Purity Society, Beautifying Association, Chrysanthemum Society and New Zealand Medical Association, Irving was the Surgeon-Major of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles and also donated the Cathedral's High Altar in gratitude for his family's safe voyage from England. Aged sixty-four, Irving died suddenly at his hospital in the evening of the 26th of October 1900 and was buried in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery. Appended below is an excerpt from Dr Irving's letter book, which gives an interesting perspective of Christchurch in 1879.

James Irving's son William followed his father into the medical profession and was subsequently Honorary Secretary of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, Medical Superintendent of the St Helens Hospital in Durham Street South and then with the St George's Hospital in Papanui. However, having been qualified for less than three years at the time of his father's demise, the superintendency of The Limes passed to the Edinburgh trained Dr Alexander Paterson who had come to Christchurch in 1897.

James Irving's daughter, Dr Hannah Margaret Irving (1881-1972) was the last burial in the Anglican section of the Barbadoes Street Cemetery.

Many local residents either began or ended their mortal span at The Limes, not the least being the twin brothers Dr David and Sir Hamish Hay, born in 1927.

In 1963 the Christchurch City Council purchased the old hospital and it was demolished in favour of a car park by 1965. In 1969 construction of the new Town Hall began, which includes the commemorative Limes Room conference facility.

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An excerpt from Dr James Irving's letter book for Wednesday, the 24th of September 1879 (with the editor's comments in parenthesis).

We are being quietly tugged up the harbour of Port Lyttelton - a beautiful one - with precipitous hills on either side, green down to the water's edge, the scenery not unlike some parts of Wales and Scotland. The pilot came out to us in the night about two o'clock, the steam tug (ss Mullogh) soon followed, and we shall soon be alongside the wharf.

Evening: The medical officer of health came on board about ten - found us all healthy - congratulated me as medical officer in charge, and we went alongside the wharf at once. Off immediately to the train to go up to Christchurch, some seven miles, and whose face is the first seen but my brother, who came here some three weeks since; a very agreeable surprise for all, as we did not know that he was here.

We took a buggy and drove round and about Christchurch. It is a perfectly flat, square city, containing about 20,000 souls; within the town is a mile square, all the streets run at right angles and quite straight, except one which runs corner-wise. The Cathedral - so much of it as is built - is in the centre of the mile square, and all the streets are named after a Bishopric. Our hotel is in Hereford Street (the Occidental), with Latimer Square just in front, Cranmer Square being on the other side of the town.

The houses are mostly of wood and are very picturesque; the town has been divided into quarter-acre sections, hence most of the houses stand back from the street, in their section, with a verandah and flower garden in front. Many houses are only one storey, but there is a degree of neatness and comfort about them, which is quite refreshing after the dull brick of most of our English towns.

Appearances are studied here, but convenience and utility not sacrificed. In England appearance is seldom thought of; at least in and around Newark, though there are some exceptions. One part of the town is within what is called the "fire block" (probably Colombo from Hereford to Cashel Streets), there the houses are of brick or stone, and closer together; wooden erections are now prohibited. All the streets are wide. An open drain made of cement on each side of the road, next the footpath, with a continual stream from the artesian wells. The footpaths are broad, and one half of them is asphalted. The kerbing is of wood, 2½ by 9 or 11 (inches).

Many of the houses and shops have verandahs extending right over the footpath, some covered with corrugated iron, some with glass painted so as to subdue the light and diminish the heat. All paths are asphalted - no slabbing. As any further description of the country cannot be very interesting to strangers, I shall close here, and write what I have to say of the country and its prospects in a future letter.

The men wanted here are small working farmers with five or six hundred pounds. They do their own labour, have none to pay for, and consequently reap all the benefits of the products of rich land.

Christwegian Courtesans & Other Less Interesting Developments.

Subsequent to the opening of the second Railway Station on Moorhouse Avenue in 1867, Manchester Street South became the principal tram route between the inner city and the station. As a consequence, that part of Manchester Street from High Street to Moorhouse Avenue became lined with hotels, restaurants and various places of entertainment, etc.

Not surprisingly, in a tradition spanning at least 130 years, the street has been the favoured haunt of those practitioners of what is reputed to be among the world's older professions. Although probably unaware of their long precedent, Christwegian courtesans are still to be found plying their precarious trade along the more northern part of Manchester Street during the hours of darkness.


Marrying a rich widow, the dandified John Etherden Coker built his third hotel on her land. Opened in 1880, it would be far from the largest, but quite the most luxurious of the Manchester Street hotels. Pictured above is the hotel's dining room. With its marble statuary and starched table linen this room offered elaborate farinaceous repast to such notables as Rudyard Kipling and the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Two years after Coker's demise the hotel's public bar was reported to be the haunt of prostitutes and their consorts.


Alas all hotels have their heyday and long gone are the Terminus, Silver Grill, A1 Temperance, Railway, Manchester and Leviathan, but in much reduced circumstances, Coker's Hotel lingers on as a Backpacker's hostel. A significant part of its formerly elegant facade is now artistically rendered to represent a semi-derelict wooden shanty and the sadly dilapidated dining room (above) continues to serve a similar, but more modest purpose.

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In 1938 William Gray Young (1885-1962) submitted a Bauhaus inspired design for a new Railway Station. To be the city's largest building, construction was delayed until 1953 and the somewhat modified design was finally completed in 1960. The Railway Station survived as such for only 31 years to be sold off for redevelopment as an entertainment centre.

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Much touted as Christchurch's tallest building, the 86 metre, 23 level C1 apartment building in Gloucester Street East has been plagued with problems. Although all but four of the apartments have been pre-sold, the above photographs indicate the minimal extent of construction development between May 2008 and May 2009.

1887 Bicycle Race

As the restoration and geo-tagging of the ten thousandth vintage streetscape looms, the four dimensional model of Christchurch is acquiring a degree of accuracy, which now allows for the positive identification of virtually all historic images of the city.


The above photograph was taken just before seven o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 26th of September 1887 by Alfred Ernest Preece (1863-1946), who lived close to the lower Riccarton Road location. It comes from the collection of the Canterbury Museum (ref 10959).

The extant Standish and Preece photographic studio was situated at 218 High Street in that era. A regular photographer of cycling events, Preece was probably also the proprietor of the A. E. Preece Cyclists' Exchange in the second A1 Hotel building on the corner of Cashel and Colombo Streets.

The photograph shows the nine contestants at the start of the Pioneer Bicycle Club's fifty mile (80 Km) bicycle race from Christchurch to Leeston and back. The race was won by Richard Bargrove of Waverley Street, New Brighton, who started from scratch and completed the race in 3 hours and 35 minutes. Beating the record by 8 minutes, Bargrove finished 20 minutes before the field.

Seen to the Right at the beginning of Riccarton Road in this easterly view is the Riccarton Hotel. The once famed hostelry stood on the southern corner of Riccarton Road and Deans Avenue at the Riccarton roundabout until 2006.

Dating from 1851, when it was known as The Traveller's Rest, subsequently as the Plough Inn when reconstructed in 1865 and then as the Riccarton Hotel, followed by Nancy’s Hotel until its last ignominous incarnation as the Fat Lady's Arms.

An early favourite with the horse racing fraternity, the hotel's eastern facade (below) faced Hagley Park opposite the finish line of the Canterbury Jockey Club's original racecourse.

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Restored detail from the National Museum of New Zealand's circa 1905 photograph

1906 Christchurch Panorama

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Photographed from the southern tower of the New Zealand Exhibition building is this easterly 1906 panorama of Christcurch. Restored from three photographs, across the foreground is Park Terrace.

1. The house to the extreme Left was constructed by George Braund Woodman in 1858. Originally a carpenter, Woodman (1826-1890) became a partner in the road contracting enterprise of Woodman & Wright, using much of the profit to make pastoral investments in the Ellesmere district.

Woodman was also the first Publican of the Devonshire Arms Hotel, original home of Latimer Square's Christchurch Club. Dating from 1852, the Devonshire Arms on the south-east corner of Durham and Peterborough Streets was rebuilt in 1876 as Barrett's Family Hotel to the design of the renowned William Barnett Armson. Subsequently renamed the Gladstone Hotel, it was one of the city’s oldest hostelries, being demolished in 2005 to make way for an office building. Parts of the 1876 structure have been incorporated in the new building.

2. Set in spacious grounds to its Right, at the corner of Kilmore Street, is the much enlarged Macfarlan house of 1864.

3. The dwelling on the opposite corner is yet to be identified, but above it is Cranmer Square and on the sky line can be seen the tall chimney of the Christchurch City Council's 1903 refuse destructor near to the corner of Manchester and Armagh Streets. The incinerator not only generated the city's first electricty supply (with a pair of 100 Kilowatt generators driven by two steam engines), but also heated the adjacent 1908-1947 swimming baths in Manchester Street.

4. To the centre foregound, at the northern corner of Park Terrace and Chester Street, is the Reginald Cobb house of 1871. Cobb was a partner with Henry Sawtell in Cobb, Sawtell and Company, general, wine and spirit merchants and agents for the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency. In 1916 it would become Helen Connon Hall, a hostel for 70 university students until 1974. Sold by the University of Canterbury to the 1881 Cathedral Grammar School and renamed Chester Hall, it was demolished in 2001. The site is now occupied by the relocated 1886 St Saviour’s church from Lyttleton.

5. On the other corner of Chester Street is the 1880 home of the Reverend William Henry Elton (1845-1914), Cathedral Precentor. Elton's house was later purchased by the Church Property Trustees to become the Cathedral Grammar School. It was demolished in September 1985.

6. Next to it is the much smaller Sanders house, built in 1880 and demolished 1977.

7. To the far Right, at the corner of Rolleston Avenue and Armagh Street is the extant 1867 house built for the lawyer George Harper, fourth son of the city's first Bishop. It has been owned by the nearby Christ's College since 1918.