In 1897, Jane Deans made the hard choice of having the “accepted” city’s oldest building demolished due to it being a hazard. When the Deans brothers, William and John, and the Manson and Gebbie families arrived on the Port Cooper (Canterbury) Plains in 1843, Samuel Manson quickly erected a barn-like building where they could all …
From the first maps of Christchurch, drawn up from our earliest survey work, there had always been Hagley Park – also known as the Government Domain. The name of Hagley had been decided upon to honour the Canterbury Association’s Chairman, Lord George Lyttelton, whose home in England was known as Hagley Lodge. The park remained …
In 1897, a meeting between concerned Christchurch citizens became the beginning of the Christchurch Beautifying Association. The main topics discussed were about scruffy wastelands, unofficial dumping areas and general eyesores of the city. Forming a quick union with the C.C.C, the association began to change the views within Christchurch, adding artistic, cultivated and scenic improvements …
With Queen Victoria celebrating her diamond jubilee, Christchurch wanted to acknowledge the occasion. A clock, that had been imported for the Canterbury Provincial Chambers in 1860 – which proved to be too heavy – was brought out of storage, along with its iron work, and a competition to design the rest of what would be …
