• Charlotte Godley Writes Home

    Charlotte Godley, the wife of Canterbury founder John Robert Godley wrote the most delightful letters home to her mother back in England and no one and I mean NO ONE escaped the fury of her pen – good or bad!  I have selected the following extracts from her letters cause she shares about places we …

  • The Grubbs

    If anyone could have related to the Split Enz’s song ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat’, it would have been Cantab pioneer John Grubb. Leaving behind his wife Mary and his three daughters in Scotland, he was on his way to Australia to make them a new life when he found himself on New Zealand …

  • Christchurch’s Soiled Doves

    On the 22nd November 1867, a city meeting took place at Christchurch’s Town Hall concerning the ‘…too bold and brazen…’ and ‘…professionally quite openly…’ attitude of Christchurch’s fallen sisters of the night. No women were in attendance. Even before the arrival of the First Four Ships, prostitutes were known to frequent Lyttelton. With the jump …

  • Cantabs Of Steel

    Next time you are getting a little impatient with how long the traffic lights are taking to change or moaning at the weeds growing untamed outside your window, I want you to think of these four Cantabs. Firstly, there was Marmaduke Dixon who with his own hands, dug an 8 foot deep well on his …

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