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 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).