Canterbury's Largest Hotel

It's often been noted that a shrewd wife is a most useful adjunct to an aspiring commercial magnate...

Alfred Joseph White, a Currier from Devon, made good in the remote frontier town that became our Nation's first city. So good in fact that he was able to acquire most of the real estate in the block enclosed by High, Manchester, Tuam and St Asaph Streets. Sixty-one year old Alfred died in 1895, but the canny Eliza presided over the substantial growth of A J White's furniture warehouse and the family's wider commercial interests.

In the first decade of the last century Fred's widow was responsible for the construction of most of the substantial buildings within the block. At the South-east corner of Manchester and St Asaph Streets the city's largest hotel was built in 1909 for the Eliza White Trust.

Known as Cockayne's Leviathan Hotel it had 180 guest rooms and even a private dining room for Ladies. Situated on the principal thoroughfare that connected the inner city with the railway station, there was a row of small shops along the Manchester Street frontage.

The hotel was subsequently leased to the Salvation Army and became known as the People's Palace. However, that army's interests in the hospitality industry eventually focused in other directions and their Manchester street hostelry became the Railton Hotel.

Familiar to generations of Christwegians the poorly maintained Railton closed in 1970. The, by then, mismanaged Eliza White Trust offered the building for sale at $270,000, but there was no interest. The following year the City Council offered to lease the bare site and the hotel was demolished. Like the sites of too many of our city's heritage buildings, it has remained a car park ever since.

See where these photographs were taken.

Opposition to New Brighton Redevelopment

Brighton Beach 1927
From a city where the more salubrious suburbs are near the airport and sea frontage properties are the cheapest in the developed world comes further example of the cognitive inflexibility that's impeding regeneration of the once popular seaside suburb.

The New Zealand Historic Places Trust and the New Brighton Residents' Association (no web site or email contact) oppose plans for apartment buildings up to ten stories high along the sea front.

Opinions are polarised between those who believe the taller buildings will regenerate the declining suburb and allow sea views above the dunes and those who believe they will create a barrier between residents and the sea, destroying the suburb's increasingly bland character.

Tussle over taller buildings - The Press, 06 May 2008

Minson's of Christchurch

Enlarged image opens in a new tab or window

A nondescript facade on the East side of Colombo Street between Gloucester and Armagh Streets belies the story of what was once a fondly remembered Christchurch institution.

In 1892 forty-eight year-old William Minson arrived in the city with a young family. Settling at the "The Hollies," on the banks of the Heathcote river in Opawa, he purchased a hardware shop originally established in 1857 by William Neeve. As Minson & Company he turned the business into a replica of the old family crockery and glassware emporium at St Ives in Cornwall.

With what was probably the best range and quality in the city, Minson flourished to the extent that he moved the shop further up Colombo Street into the 1882 three-storied Compton House. In 1912 he extended the premises through to Gloucester Street. Succeeded by Arthur William, the oldest of his three sons, Minson died in 1925 aged 81 and now lies in Linwood Cemetery.

Carville Stewart recalled Minsons in the late 1920s: '... a long narrow shop on Colombo Street, north of Cathedral Square, that sold good quality china, cutlery and glassware - they kept a great deal of their stock on island displays alongside a central aisle that ran down the length of the store. The floor was wooden and when you walked down that very long aisle, every piece of china, on every one of those island displays, rattled alarmingly. It sounded as if every piece of expensive china was going to fall off and break into a thousand pieces - quite terrifying for a shy little boy who just wanted to see the Micro Models at the back of the store."

Alas commercial acumen is not an inheritable trait and its fourteenth decade the venerable store declined into extinction, but shorn of its elaborate facade in the 1940s the old premises survives as a dilapidated ghost of its former glory.

---

Fleshin' Out Dem Dry Bones

Republished here for the first time since 1856 The Progress of Canterbury : A Letter Addressed to Joseph Thomas, Esq., Late Principal Surveyor and Acting Agent of the Canterbury Association is a 7,422 word pamphlet in the form of an open letter from one of the more unusual Shagroons to his long term friend; an even more unusual sort of chap.

Bob Waitt and his chum Joe Thomas arrived at Wellington in 1840. Robert Waitt (1816-1866), a 24 year old canny Scot settled at what was then known as Te Aro Beach, establishing himself as a General Merchant, Agent, Auctioneer, Importer, Exporter and Coastal Trader. Joseph Thomas (1803-1881), a former Army Captain, joined the survey staff of the New Zealand Company.

Described as an engaging character the eccentric Waitt, a Wellington Municipal Councilor by 1842, sealed his letters with a neat Dinna Forget in place of the usual crest or monogram. In 1850 he opened a branch of his business at Lyttelton and by 1854 had also leased the Motunau station from Edward Greenwood. To the North of the Waipara River, and then known as Double Corner, he renamed it Teviotdale Station (in his text Waitt refers to Motunau as Motinua).

Fellow run holder Charles Cox described him as a red-faced man with tow-like white hair, large prominent tusks of teeth, and abundant evidence of being addicted to tobacco for chewing purposes. A picturesque story-teller, his friends are said to have known him as "white-headed Bob, the liar."

At some time between 1854 and 1857 Waitt purchased the 50 acre Casterton estate in the Heathcote Valley from the Reverend Robert Paul, where he is described as a Gentleman by 1860 - a presumption that would probably have invited ridicule in his native Jedburgh. He died, aged 50, in 1866 and is buried in Christchurch's Barbadoes Street Cemetery. Survived by only one of his three children, he was thereby the grandfather of Leo Acland, author of the renowned The Early Canterbury Runs.

The ostensible recipient of Waitt's loquacious paean led the Canterbury Association's 1848 preliminary expedition. Acting as the first resident Agent and Principal Surveyor he appears to have offended many of the 110 Europeans employed in the early development of the Theocratic Utopia. Said to be overbearing, unreliable and impulsive, the large, burly and bespectacled Thomas was unable to brook advice or opposition.

The opinion of his assistant Edward Jollie was that Thomas was not altogether in his right mind, "...he had had so many losses from putting trust in other people's honesty that he had become suspicious of everyone. He was however a very honest and hard working administrator of affairs for the Association..."

Joseph Thomas' boss arrived at Lyttelton in April 1850, expressing dissatisfaction at what he considered the excessive expenditure on some of the works which Thomas had thought necessary. The eventual consequence being that Thomas left the Province in January 1851, departing the colony permanently in the following year.

Perhaps one of the least fortunate aspects of his legacy was a refusal to allow his assistant to include broad avenues and crescents in the city plan, describing them as mere "Gingerbread."

However, Waitt's contemporary perspective on the early development of the Province makes for an interesting read.

The Progress of Canterbury : A Letter Addressed to Joseph Thomas, Esq., Late Principal Surveyor and Acting Agent of the Canterbury Association

---