When Richmond School closed in 2013, three honours boards were donated to Avebury House for safe-keeping. The school had been a central part of the Richmond community for over 100 years. Originally the school was located in Stanmore Road, on the site that is now Richmond Green. The school outgrew that site and in 1925 moved to a new location on what was then Cumberland St (now Pavitt St).

Like many communities around the world, Richmond saw many of its young men leave to fight in WW1. The names of those servicemen (and one woman) who had a connection with Richmond School are recorded on this honours board, which is now housed in the Gordon Prince Room at Avebury House. The story of the sole woman, Jessie Maddison, is told briefly in Andrea Grieve’s article for the April 2018 Richmond Community News: (www.aveburyhouse.co.nz/uploads/4/7/2/0/47203855/rcn_118-april-2018.pdf).
         
The wooden board measures 1560 mm wide & 1955 mm high. There are 325 names recorded in five columns. Forty-seven names have a silver star beside them, which indicates the person died while on service. A small metal plaque (116 x 71 mm), attached at the top centre, reads "Presented by Pupils and Friends, 16-2-1918".

It's interesting that the board was presented in Feb 1918, when the war was still far from over. Perhaps it was the empty board itself that was donated at that date, and the names were added later.

The board itself is terse; it doesn’t state specifically that these are WW1 servicemen. Was there another element to the memorial in its previous location? And the names appear to be in no particular order; there are several people sharing a surname, but they aren't grouped together.

There are not many other WW1 memorials in Richmond; there is a memorial stone in the grounds of the Richmond Working Men’s Club, commemorating club members who were killed in the world wars. The nearest conventional memorial is the obelisk outside the Burwood School site on the corner of New Brighton Rd and Lake Terrace Rd along with the memorial gates to Wilding Park in Woodham Rd.

The handwritten caption for this photo simply states “Launching the Rondino”. A little more information might be useful!? It turns out that the Rondino was a boat built by Huia Beaumont, a well-known Richmond resident, in the late 1930s. In his autobiography, “Long Time Passing”,* Huia writes at some length about the Rondino, how he built it and the adventures he and his family enjoyed in the boat on the Avon River.

Huia started building the Rondino in 1939, from plans published in “Popular Mechanic” magazine. The boat was 17 feet long with a 6-foot beam and drew only 4 inches unloaded. Even with 16 adults and children on board, Huia says the boat drew only 8 inches and was very stable.

If the photo was taken at the launching, as the caption suggests, the date was 1 February 1940 and the location was just downstream of the Medway St weir. The photo was taken from the north bank looking upstream. The picture reveals more than its nominal subject matter. The old wooden Medway St bridge, built in 1938 and replaced in 1980, is visible, as is the weir, which was removed in the 1950s. The river banks appear to be sparsely planted and the willow trees on the south bank are a lot smaller than today.

The photo is a poor modern copy of an old colour print. Colour film was still unusual in New Zealand in 1940; most photos at this time were taken on B&W film. Large scale colour photography didn’t become commonplace in New Zealand for non-enthusiasts until the 1960’s.

* Beaumont, H.W., “Long Time Passing, the Life Story of ‘Down to Earth Beauie”
Richmond Village Bookshop, 1992.
pp163–173.

This photograph was reproduced in Richmond Community News #56, March 2008. Alan Williamson wrote an accompanying article about the property. The original article is available here: www.aveburyhouse.co.nz/uploads/4/7/2/0/47203855/rcn-056-march-2008.pdf

The house at 71 North Avon Road, at the NW corner of the intersection with Stapletons Rd, was converted to include a petrol station in 1927. The property was owned at that time by Norman Baggs, a builder, who kept the property until 1941. The petrol station changed hands several times over the following ten years. In 1952 the property was bought by Alex Levy who operated the station with his son Ross. For some time, Barry Halliday ran an auto repair business alongside the garage in Stapletons Rd.

Later the property was owned by Sonyac Services; there is an advertisement for Sonyac Services in the Pegasus Post, 12 November 1980 special feature on the newly opened North Avon Village shopping centre. Sometime after that the building was decommissioned as a petrol station and was converted to a dry-cleaners. Richmond Drycleaners still operate on the site today (2018). The site still includes a drive-thru feature which is a carry-over from the time when the property was a petrol station.

The photograph includes several signs: one advertising Big Tree petrol; there is at least one Big Tree pump visible under the covered area. There is also a sign offering “Car Service While You Wait”, with “Full Chassis Lubrication” and “Crankcase and Battery Service”, and a sign “Free Air”. The photograph has a label affixed which dates it to ‘circa 1930’, presumably based on the age of the cars and other paraphernalia. In his article, Alan Williamson identifies the vehicles in the photo as a Ford Model T truck with a Dodge Roadster behind and another American sedan on the ramp.

The photograph is a modern inkjet print copy of an original photograph. The print has the date 18/07/2005 printed in the bottom right-hand corner, presumably the date the copy print was made. 

The Richmond Community News was first published in later 2002. One of the features of the newsletter in the years before the earthquakes was the high number of local history articles, especially a series of items about older houses in the area.

Richmond is unusual amongst older Christchurch suburbs in that very little has been written, and even less published about the history of the area, so these articles represent a treasure trove for people interested in the development of the area.

The back catalogue of the Richmond Community News is now available online (www.aveburyhouse.co.nz/newsletter.html). The link below leads to an index of the history-related articles in the issues between 2003–2011. This 9-page document may help people find a particular article more quickly than reading through all the back issues. The index is simply a chronological list starting with issue #2 (February 2003), giving the title and page number of any history-related articles, up until issue #86 (February 2011).