“…the land commonly known as Hagley Park, shall be reserved for ever as a public park, and shall be open for the recreation and enjoyment of the public…” and boy, have we Cantabs expected this law passed by our Founding Fathers in 1855 to be upheld and respected today or WATCH OUT! From the beginning …
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 …
Tommy Cass knew life’s ups and downs. By the time he was surveying the 33,000 acres that would become the Deans’ future rural station of ‘Homebush’ in 1851, Tommy had earned the respect and admiration of all those around him. You get the feeling that he walked along with a great confidence and self knowledge …
Today, all that marks where the St George’s Chapel (pictured) stood in the Barbadoes (should have been spelt Barbados – a 1849 typo that wasn’t corrected) Street Cemetery is a large plaque with a grave map and an acknowledgement to all that were buried there without ceremony or marker. Barbadoes is considered to be Christchurch’s …
A lovely painting of ‘The Bricks’, an area along the Avon River, by the corner of Barbadoes Street and Oxford Terrace. A memorial now stands there which was erected in December 1926 and it is mostly forgotten. Named ‘The Bricks’ by the Deans in 1843 – it was here that they left the bricks for …
The wind whipped waving tussock of the Canterbury Plains can’t have made the surveyor’s job very easy. I can’t say whether the surveyors pushed their pegs into the ground by the use of tools or whether they just crouched down amongst the flaxy marsh and pushed them in by hand.Whatever happened, Edward Jollie and his …
It seemed many brothers decided to throw their lot in together and make a go of things in Canterbury…and they make the most interesting character studies. There were the Deans, Brittans, Moorhouses, Bealeys, Greenwoods, Rhodes, Wakefields, Fishers and the Jollies – Francis Jollie is pictured here. Francis Jollie (1815 – 1870) arrived in the Wakefield …
I’m sure after Edward Jollie had finished surveying (driving pegs into the ground to mark out the roads and sections) the areas of Canterbury that would become Christchurch, Lyttelton and Sumner, he was quite over tussock, flax, cabbage trees and slipping up to his thighs in the swamp that was the Canterbury Plains in 1849. …
Around the end of the last century, as one strolled south down Manchester Street – not far from the corner of Lichfield Street – a dark narrow lane would soon appear on your right. As much as you would fight it, your eyes couldn’t resist a quick glance into the dimness.There is nothing there, an …
