Christchurch Heritage Tragedy

It was announced on the 31st of July, 2009 that a two storey Sydenham warehouse dating from the late 1860s is to be demolished to make way for a new terminus for Leopard Coachlines.

Situated on the eastern side of Montreal Street, between the railway line and Disraeli Street, and forming part of the complex of buildings that has been the premises of CRC Salvage and Demolition since 1984, it is Christchurch's oldest surviving industrial building.

Canterbury Heritage calls upon the Christchurch City Council and the Historic Places Trust to save this historically significant part of our cultural heritage from destruction.


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Above: details from street and rear views of the historic warehouse, from a set of seven photographs by Greg O'Beirne.

Canterbury's First Fire Station

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Photographed in August, 1862, this is a view of the three buildings occupying Lyttelton Town Section 33 to the eastern side of the access to the Canterbury Association's 1850 jetty. In 2009 it is the south-eastern corner of Norwich Quay, where the over-pass to the wharves begins just below the intersection with Oxford Street.


A similar view 147 years later
To the Right in the top photograph, at the south-eastern corner of the intersection is the Lyttelton Fire Station. Built in 1858, it preceeded the formal establishment of the Lyttelton Fire Brigade by four years.

Above the engine shed's front doors is the sign of the Liverpool, London and Globe Fire Insurance Company. That company shipped the engine, and the bell in the belfry above, from England to their Lyttelton agents.

Under the supervision of Thomas James Curtis, the Fire Brigade's Superintendent from 1862, the engine's steam powered pump could lift water, via a hose from the beach, three blocks north to Exeter Street.


From the rear in 1865
Next door, to the centre of the top photograph, is the 1852 premises of Bowler and Company. William Bowler (1803-1863), who lived in Sumer Road (just visible at the top Left of the top photograph), was a General Merchant and Shipping Agent. Bowler sent the first direct shipment of wool from Canterbury to London in 1856 and was subsequently owner of the paddle tug Lyttelton, which began service in the port from January, 1861.


Sketch detail: 1869 Royal Visit
Although the company's sign continues to indicate Bowler and Co., Isaac Thomas Cookson (1817-1881), agent for the Liverpool and London Fire Insurance Company had already entered into partnershp with Bowler, with the company's name becoming known as Cookson, Bowler and Company

The Fire Station and adjacent premises of Bowler and Company were demolished by 1880 to make way for the Lyttelton Harbour Board's extant former offices, currently occupied by The Harbourmaster's Café.

To the Right in the top photograph is the store of James Drummond Macpherson (1829-1894), built in 1859 on piers above the original beach. A Customs Agent, Lloyd's Agent, Ship owner, General Merchant, Coalmonger and Farmer, Macpherson was the first representative of Mathieson's Agency, a London company which shipped merchandise to the colony on consignment.

circa 1863
From 1864, using spoil from the railway tunnel construction, reclamation of the foreshore began. Five years later, with nearby soil quarried by prison labour, the beach in front of Scotsman's store disappeared beneath the site of the Port's first Railway Station.

circa 1908
The 1859 store became the Railway's offices and parcel shed, a role that it would continue to fulfil until 1963.


Overpass construction 1962
Knowing the price of everything, but nothing of heritage value, between 1965 and 1970 the Lyttelton Harbour Board set about the needless destruction of most of the historic buildings along the town's waterfront. James Macpherson's 1859 store was among the first to go. Its site remained vacant for 40 years, eventually succumbing to a nondescript concrete box in the neo-brutalist tradition.

The only surviving relic of Macpherson's ownership is the 1855 steam tug Mullogh, whose rusting bones now rest on Lyttelton Harbour's Quail Island.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Christchurch Morgue

There are no known specific photographs of the city morgue, but it does appear in sufficient elevated views of the area as to enable us to purvey the following diversion for assorted Goths and sundry others enjoying a proclivity to the taphophilic

The city's first purpose built morgue stood on the southeast corner of Manchester and Armagh Streets, where the 1939 Art Deco Municipal Electricity Department building now stands. It's successor, which probably dated from 1873, was accessed by a long cast-iron fenced and gated service lane on Montreal Street, which ran between the Canterbury Militia's parade ground on Cashel Street and the Hereford Street Police Station's 1865 accommodation barracks and stables.

Having something of the appearance of a small chapel and built of brick on a north-south axis, with a wooden shingle roof, there was a tall ornamented chimney on the northern wall, which faced Hereford Street. In what was a somewhat less appealing situation than the city's more salubrious locales, a porticoed entrance on the eastern wall faced the Police Station Lockup.

The morgue probably consisted of four rooms; a waiting room, post mortem room, a coroner's room and a special room for the reception of bodies. The coroner's and post mortem rooms would possibly have been connected by a glazed sliding door, which, in the case of a body being in an advanced state of decompositon, could be kept closed, and yet allow a jury be in a position to view the cadaver. With concrete floors and a plentiful water supply from the adjacent tank stand, the rooms for the reception of bodies and post mortems could be flushed out whenever required.

By 1907 the morgue's location had become the back garden of the Police Matron's residence and it could be likely that from about that time it was superseded by the morgue at the Christchurch Public Hospital. In 1970 the old morgue was designated as a garage on a survey map compiled before the demolitions on what had become the site of a large assortment of buildings, both big and small.

Since 1974 the whole site has been a car park for the central Police Station and the adjoining site of the 1905 King Edward Barracks has been a public car park since 1996. With the current redevelopment of the former Post Office sorting centre on Hereford Street as the new headquarters for the Christchurch City Council, it could be hoped that both car parks might be combined to form a piazza worthy of the reconstructed building that will face them.

Photo: a circa 1955 view, with the roof of the morgue to the foreground and the 1909 Police Sergeant's House, facing Hereford Street, in the background (and the extant 1930 St Elmo Courts in the distance).

Christchurch 7 April 2009

Another one bites the dust: a circa 1875-1880 villa in inner-city Kilmore Street in the process of demolition.

A velocopidist commuting to the city via the Avon River bank in the suburb of Richmond.

The Pennyfarthing is of recent vintage.

Footnote

A century ago Christchurch, along with Amsterdam, ranked highest among the world's cycling cities and was also the hub of New Zealand's bicycle manufacturing industry. By the mid 1960s the increase in motorised traffic on the city's streets began to see a signficant rise in the injuries sustained by cyclists. An ambulance at the bottom of the cliff mentality saw the introduction of a legal requirment for all cyclists to wear safety helmets and the popularity of the bicycle went into decline. Not even the cycling fatalities sustained by a Christchurch City Councillor, New Zealand Police's most senior Traffic Officer and an internationally renowned cyclist in the last week of a two year world tour, has seen the introduction of enlightened policies and protection aimed at promoting cycling in Christchurch in particular or New Zealand in general.

However, and in spite of the foregoing, we're pleased to note that over the last five years the number of commuter cyclists in Christchurch has increased by 25%. We also applaud the somewhat belated proposal for a national cycleway, so widely popular in more developed countries (Britain's national cycleway recorded 475 million journeys in 2007).

And lest you should think that the foregoing is little more than the rant of a grizzled curmudgeon (you're probably right), it is written from a perspective of sixty years cycling the streets of Christchurch and far beyond (and upon the same Raleigh Roadster, with a camera and tripod in the pannier bag, since 1956).


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World cycling champion Frederick Wood (1861-1935) of England comes a cropper at Lancaster Park in early 1888 in a seemingly posed photograph by Alfred Ernest Preece (1863-1946). Photo credit: Christchurch City Libraries, File Reference: CCL PhotoCD 1, IMG0072

Christchurch's First Palace

Situated on the quarter acre Town Section 404, the first house on the western side of the Avon River was built in 1851 by Henry John Cridland (1821-1867), Superintendent of Public Works for the Canterbury Association from 1849. A New Zealand Company surveyor from 1843, Cridland was also an artist, architect, and like many of his lower middle class contemporaries, a political schemer and property speculator.


By 1856 a large extension had been added to the rear of the house. In December of that year the Cridland family moved to their farm at Hoon Hay and the house became the episcopal palace of Henry John Chitty Harper (1804-1893), first Bishop of Christchurch. Harper and his large family, who fetched water from the river, occupied the house until the completion in late 1858 of the much grander Bishopscourt on nearby Park Terrace.


Situated on Cambridge Terrace, equidistant between Worcester and Hereford Streets, the house was the only occupant of the block's river frontage until 1863 when the first Public Library building was completed at the Hereford Street corner and then the Canterbury Club to the Worcester Street corner 1874.


In later years the old house appears to have been occupied by staff of the Canterbury Club. Demolished between 1918 and 1920, the site became part of the Club's garden, which was replaced with a sealed car park by 1965. As such it remains.


Harper's residential predilection for the western side of the Avon River, rather than the extensive Anglican church lands in the vicinity of Cranmer Square, was probably instrumental in the development of the area as the salubrious suburb of West End, much favoured by the professional classes.

The subsequent development of the Canterbury University College on what had previously been a residential block attracted academics to the suburb from the mid 1870s. By the 1930s many of the grand homes had become private hotels and rooming houses for the College's students.

A thriving bohemian culture developed among the artists, writers, poets and musicians who occupied the quarter through the following decades. Toward the latter part of the twentieth century the bishops, accountants and lawyers moved on to suburban Cashmere, the University left the area and much of the built heritage was replaced high rise concrete.

The city's first suburb, which was subsequently associated with many of the most illustrious names in the New Zealand arts community of the twentieth century, lost its name, social cohesion and much of the former aesthetic.

Photo Credits: the Canterbury Museum, the Christchurch Public Library, the Christchurch Art Gallery and the Alexander Turnbull Library.

West End

Much favoured by the professional class, the inner city area between the Avon River and Hagley Park was known as the residential suburb of West End. The name finally faded away in the 1950s.

Above are westerly and easterly views of Armagh Street, across the intersection with Durham Street, in the first decade of last century. Pictured are the buildings of the former Canterbury Provincial Council, which by that time were the offices of the Department of Crown Lands. Built in the mid 1880s and demolished in 1962, the substantial house was typical of the dwellings in this area. 

Looters Ransack Historic Site

The Rising Sun hotel was built on what had been the garden of Dr. Augustus Florance in 1865 by Frank Innes, who had arrived at Lyttelton aboard the Sebastopol two years earlier. 

Situated in the Christchurch suburb of St Albans and more infamously known as the Rising Hell, the much altered and extended hotel became the Caledonian in 1878. As such it continued to enjoy something of a louche reputation until closing in late 2007.

The extensive site was undergoing evaluation by archaeologists from the University of Otago when the dig was raided during the night of the 26th of March, 2009. Artefacts and layers of information critical to archaeological analysis were destroyed as the looters picked over the site, upon which it's reported that sixty town-houses are to be built.

 

Our Shame

In July 2008 we reported on Ti Kouka House, the circa 1865 home of Samuel de la Bere Barker (1848-1901) at 281 Cambridge Terrace near to the Madras Street bridge.

Son of Dr Alfred Charles Barker, the pioneer of Canterbury photography, Sam Barker was a widely renowned Botanist. A promenade along the river bank was officially named Barkers Avenue as a consequence of his development of a botanical garden in the extensive grounds of Ti Kouka house, which originally stretched from the river bank to Kilmore Street. A part of the garden was subsequently replaced by an extension to Cambridge Terrace, now a cul de sac.

Occupying a potentially valuable inner city redevelopment site, the historically significant house had been allowed to fall into dereliction in an all too familiar and shamefully predictable sequence that resulted in an arson attempt in August, 2008. On the night of the 21st of March 2009 the second attempt to burn the house succeeded.

That the Christchurch City Council and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust apparently turned a blind eye while this historic house, which was in relatively sound condition in July 2008, was allowed to fall into ruin and finally succumb to a second arson attempt, raises serious issues which might be more appropriately addressed at a national level.


Ti Kouka House, 29 June 2003
Courtesy of Early Canterbury Photographers

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Further Reading

We are greatfully indebted to kinopus 88 for the above detail from a photograph of the conflaguration, which is part of a sequence of 16 photos recording the final destruction of Ti Kouka House.

Post-fire photos of Ti Kouka House.

July, 2008 original article: Saving Canterbury's Heritage

August, 2008 post fire article: Heritage Tragedy

A sequence of photographs by Ars 666 of the interior of Ti Kouka House in August, 2008

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.

Cathedral Square 1957

Historiography is the study of the history of history (the writing of history always illuminates two periods - the one history is written about and the one it is written in).

Above is a photograph that quite recently appeared in a Christchurch newspaper. It is identified in the caption as "... in the 1950s outside The Star building in Cathedral Square..."

The photograph was taken on the morning of Sunday, the first of December, 1957 in front of the Colonial Mutual Life building on the eastern corner of Cathedral Square and Colombo Street north. The 97 year-old building was demolished in 1977 to make way for what is now the Camelot Hotel.

Christchurch Now & Then: The Temperance Hotel

Subsequent to a reader's enquiry concerning the location of Christchurch's Temperance Hotel, we're pleased to have been able to ascertain the following.

What would become 145-151 Cambridge Terrace was originally a triangular shaped quarter acre town section at the south-west corner of Cambridge Terrace and Gloucester Street. The first building on the site was a single storey villa, with two extended bays facing the river.

Built across this site in the late 1880s, Lodge's Temperance Hotel and Boarding House was demolished in 1963. The Canterbury Horticultural Society's Hall was subsequently built over the garden and the extant Warren House five storey office building constructed at the street corner in 1965.

The Horticultural Hall and the adjacent Synagogue in Gloucester Street were demolished in 1984. These sites have remained car parks ever since. The street level of Warren House is currently occupied by the Santorini Greek Restaurant.

1861 Christchurch Hotel Demolition

UPDATE
We are pleased to announce that subsequent to the publication of the following article the Christchurch City Council has offered free fire/structure/condition reports and to fast track any heritage grant applications, which would meet 40% of refurbishment costs of the hotel.
It has also been announced that as a possible future use, New Zealand Aotearoa Adolescent Health and Development (NZAAHD) has applied for community funding to development the Occidental as emergency/transition housing for young people aged 16-24 years. The Ministry of Youth Development has also expressed an interest in using the building to accommodate young people on the independent youth benefit, with a programme to teach living skills.

Described as an eyesore by Katie McKone in Christchurch's The Star newspaper, the former Collins' Family Hotel and Boarding House at 208 Hereford Street, overlooking Latimer Square, is threatened with demolition by its owners; the curiously named City Foresight Ltd.

Built  in 1861 to the design of the Architect Samuel Coleridge Farr (1827-1918), the hotel and livery stables were popular with the wives and families of the members of the nearby 1862 Christchurch Club, of which James Collins had been the Steward since its foundation in 1856.

The hotel became known as the Occidental in 1889 when John Harris became the Licensee. George Pain (1854-1904) is listed the the Hotelkeeper from 1900. Benjamin Perry (1845-1926) acquired the License in 1906 and his son Ben (1885-1956) became the Publican when he died. Popular with the horse racing fraternity during that time, the renowned author Janet Frame was a housemaid-waitress there in 1947.


Perry's Occidental Hotel eventually declined into a Backpackers hostel in 1998. With the bedrooms painted in lurid colours, guests also complained that the former hotel was damp and smelly, unsurprisingly it closed in August, 2006.


Purchased in 2006 by another budget hotel company, Stonehurst Accommodation Ltd changed its name to City Foresight Ltd. in May, 2008.

Russell Harcourt Glynn is Chief Executive Officer of City Foresight Ltd. and Manager of the 1926 Stonehurst Hotel, which claims to "maintain our environmental integrity and to continually enhance our surroundings."

Glynn is reported in The Star newspaper article as saying in reference to the proposed demolition "You have to get emotions out of this, at the end of the day it is money. Emotions for me do not apply to this building - just because the building looks pretty and is heritage listed doesn't mean it is viable."

Along with former City Councillor Anna Crighton, Canterbury Heritage is both shocked and concerned at the prospect of the demolition of Christchurch's oldest surviving hotel.

Should a ghost haunt the old hotel's 35 rooms, then it's likely to be that of the wife of Captain the Honourable Francis Jollie (1815-1870) of Peel Forest. Jane Jollie died while staying at the hotel in 1869 and we would therefore exhort her shade to temporarily relocate to the other side of Latimer Square and thereby ensure sleepless nights for the seemingly Philistine Mr. Glynn.