The Bricks

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 …

William Barbour Wilson – ‘Cabbage Wilson’ (1819 – 1897)

William Barbour Wilson was born in Kirkcudbrightshire in Scotland. He started off his adulthood as a nurseryman’s apprentice. He then moved to Ireland where he worked as an overseer for a few estates there. No one knows why he set his sights on New Zealand next. Maybe it was because New Zealand seemed a certain …

RICCARTON – William & John Deans (1817 -1851 & 1820 -1854)

William Deans, Samuel Manson and Jimmy Robinson Clough had quite a journey to complete from the Sumner bar, down the Otakaro (the Avon River) and then on on to Putaringamotu (Riccarton) in 1841. When the party reached what is now the Barbadoes Street Bridge, by Oxford Terrace, they continued in a canoe as the Port …

‘The Bricks’ Got Historically Acknowledged – 16th December 1926

In December 1926, an area by the Avon, near the corner of Barbadoes Street and Oxford Terrace – known as ‘The Bricks’ – is acknowledged by the unveiling of a brick cairn. Named ‘The Bricks’ by the Deans Brothers in 1843 – it was here that they left the bricks for their chimney on the …