Henry Sewell could do amazing things with money and numbers – which made him more than a little unpopular! Henry’s father died when he was teenager and left a £3000 debt over the family from a collapsed banking project. Maybe this was when Henry’s number skills became prominent as he tackled the debt full on. …
Nihil stile quod non honestum – Nothing is useful that is not honest – The Press – www.press.co.nz motto.So true. The Press are onto something!I was completely ecstatic to see this in the foyer of the new Press Building on Gloucester Street.This pillar displays the very first edition of The Press, dated 25th May 1861. …
Maybe it had been the tedious bumpy ROADLESS journey over the sea of tussock – from Hawkins (a stone’s throw from Darfield) to Rolleston – that made the farmhand lower the new plough down to harvesting position before he towed it back to Bangor in which he worked. He had been sent out hours before …
The fact that the MacKenzie Country is named after a famous outlaw and now folk hero shows our Kiwi laid back attitude off beautifully! James MacKenzie (1820 – ?) was a Scot that emigrated to Australia in 1849 – finding work in the gold fields there. No one knows for sure when James arrived in …
John Robert Godley was a man who everyone seemed to have an opinion about. One man would say “he was a King amongst men’ where another called him ‘a whale in a duck pond’. Both descriptions paint an image of the man who founded Christchurch. Born in Dublin in 1814, he grew up in the …
James Fitzgerald is known for starting “The Press” and William Moorhouse is known for bringing the railway to Christchurch (Ferrymead to Christchurch city) and New Zealand. What is also well known is that the two did not like each other and Fitzgerald used ‘The Press’ to express his own views on worldly things and hopefully …
The area that we now know as the suburb of Spreydon was first owned by Augustus Moore who named it after his family’s land back in Ireland in 1853. Some reports stated that he farmed his land but he is remembered today as a brewer, running a drinking establishment named the ‘Spreydon Arms’ which was …
For years and years, the corner of James Street and Liffey Close, Lincoln was an unkempt wasteland. As time trickled on and the old timers either moved away or died, those left behind as well as the Selwyn District Council just assumed that the lot was Crown land. In the early 1960’s, Lincoln was in …
The names of Rhodes and Barker, for Canterbury historians and alike, represent a delicious smorgasbord of old photos, journals, homesteads, memorials and real-life colourful characters who made the swamps and Toi Toi of Canterbury their home. The Rhodes Brothers – William, George and Robert – had settled on Banks Peninsula – from Akaroa in the …
Jesse Watts-Russell sure helped his son J.C. when he purchased for him 500 acres from the Canterbury Association for the new colony of Christchurch. 10 acres of this was in Lyttelton and the rest would become known as Ilam. 1850 would be a huge year for J.C.; he married Elizabeth Bradshaw and the newly weds …
