“On the east side of Market Place stood Mr. Gould’s General Store with a great barrier in the middle of the floor filled with fascinating coils of rope-like tobacco – fascinating because we thought it was good to having (having I suppose watched sailors and Maoris chewing lumps) till an experimentalising younger brother nearly put …
I’m sure like every other young man at Oxford University, Thomas Jackson (1812 -1886) had big dreams and he was very smart. He graduated with a B.A. in 1834 and an M.A. in 1837. At the young age of 32, Thomas – who was now an Anglican Clergyman – was the principal of the St …
It seems fitting that in the year of 1873, Edmund Spencer not only purchased his own piece of land – at Chaney Corner in the Styx (Redwood) – but he would also celebrate the birth of his son William; this father a true inspiration to his son and these two men together would influence the …
It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the first meeting of The Canterbury Association on the 27th March 1848. The chosen room at 41 Charing Cross, London began to fill with some of the well known names and faces of the British upper class; gentlemen of the church, noble families, rank and money, some of …
It was the odd length and the bars over this grave that made me take a closer look. Makes one think that someone wanted to make sure he stayed in there – they were a superstitious lot back then – but even that madness wouldn’t explain the length. I haven’t seen another grave like it …
“It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which exists between the level grass levels plains in the east of the Canterbury Province, and the rugged forest-covered country of the west. Tasman, in 1642, described the west coast of New Zealand as a ‘great land uplifted high,’ reminding him of the ‘Island …
Through his own drunken haze, 41 year old Donald Fraser felt rather at unease that night, or so he mentioned in passing. He staggered through the bar of the Riccarton Hotel (built 1883), which was operating beyond the law as alcohol was not to be sold after 6pm but yet again, it was almost 11pm …
*image courtesy of http://christchurchcitylibraries.com*
Grace McIlraith (nee Lyons) was only 10 years old when she came to stay at Riccarton in 1854. In the company of her parents, they had walked up to the Deans Cottage (which then faced the Avon, just a few metres from a cattle track that we know as Kahu Road today) and was met …
Jimmy Robinson Clough was an British ex-convict, ex-whaler, farmer, boat and fence builder, a drunk, suspected bigamist and the first European to settle in Canterbury. In 1837, after spotting a beautiful Maori woman in Akaroa where his ship had dropped anchor, he deserted his post and married her. They had 5 children together. In 1840 …
