About 18 months ago I prepared a document, "A Snapshot of Bingsland, 1879" (www.aveburyhouse.co.nz/uploads/4/7/2/0/47203855/snapshot_of_bingsland-1879.pdf). That document listed residents of the area that would soon become Richmond, taken from Alfred Buck's Suburban Dictionary, 1879.
 
To tie in with our display for the 2021 Beca Heritage festival, I have prepared a similar document "A Snapshot of Richmond, 1890". This document lists Richmond residents taken from Wise's Suburban Directory of that year — when Richmond people petitioned to leave the Avon Road Board and join Christchurch city. 

Comparing the two documents you can see how our little neck of the woods had moved from a rural outpost to a suburban community on the edge of Christchurch.

​As well as the list of names and addresses, I have included information on people's occupations, where available, and have also added some contemporary newspaper articles, which show some of the hot topics for Richmond people in the 1880s.

David Hollander
October 2021
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For the 2021 Beca Heritage Festival, the Richmond History group took our festival display theme as "1890 — Richmond Joins the City".

At the beginning of 1890, Richmond lay outside the Christchurch city boundaries. Since the very beginning of Christchurch, these boundaries were the four town belts — now the four avenues. 

In 1890, Richmond formed part of the Avon Road Board's area. Road boards had been established in Canterbury by the provincial government in 1864. Their name indicates their primary function, but most road boards soon became involved, willingly or not, in a wide range of local government activities. The Avon Road Board managed a large area, between the Avon and Waimakariri rivers. Most of this land was rural, but by the 1880s, a few areas close to the city, like Richmond, were becoming more suburban in nature. People living in these areas were becoming dissatisfied with the services (or lack of them) that the road board could provide.

In late 1889, three Richmond men: Joseph Broadley (a baker), David Cochrane (a painter & decorator) and Walter Langford (a carpenter & undertaker), organised a petition circulated amongst the residents of Richmond, asking for the suburb to become part of the city of Christchurch. The petition is now preserved in the collections of Archives New Zealand/Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga. 
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In the document below you can read about the petition and the men who organised it, as well as see who signed it. When Richmond did become part of Christchurch city on 30 May 1890, it was the first extension of the city beyond the original town boundaries.