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 …

The Pegasus Arms

As a Management Committee member for the Canterbury Association, I’m sure Henry Le Cren felt a sense of achievement as he made his way down the jetty from the ‘Barbara Gordon” with all his worldly belongings. His cousin John Longden was with him – what an adventure to be in Canterbury, especially with the first …