George Walsh’s Book about Richmond

 Thanks are due to Don Hudson of Kiwi Publishers who recently donated several copies of the Kiwi Publishers 1998 reprint of George Walsh’s book “Richmond Christchurch – a Regional History” to the Richmond History Group. Don has also given us permission to copy the book and make it available online, so it is great to be able to make this scarce publication more readily available. The 48-page booklet, originally published in 1973, is hard to find nowadays; there are copies available in the New Zealand Collection at Tūranga, but these cannot be borrowed. The booklet is now available here as an 18MB PDF file; click the link at the end of this post.

George Walsh (1901–1975) was born in Richmond and his parents were long-time residents. His book is still the only publication that describes the development of Richmond from rural hinterland in the 1850s–60s to inner city suburb by 1890s and after.
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The booklet is not without faults; the title is something of a misnomer — there is nothing regional about the book, and some of the history pages include errors and should be read with a grain of salt. The strongest sections are:

• (pp 20–29) — about the school, much of which has been sourced from the school jubilee booklet of 1925. 
  ​Two Richmond School jubilee publications are available on this page.
• (pp 30–48) — the author’s memories of Richmond and its inhabitants in the early 20th Century. In these pages he walks in memory through the Richmond of his youth and writes freely about individuals and families he knew as a boy growing up in the area.

Despite its shortcomings, the book is a valuable resource for people interested in our local history and we are indebted to Don Hudson for making it so readily available. 

richmond-walsh_g.pdf
File Size:	18415 kb
File Type:	pdf

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