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Richmond History Group

The Richmond History Group is based at Avebury House. The group maintains a collection of books, photographs and other memorabilia illustrating and recording the history of Avebury House and the development of the surrounding suburb of Richmond. We seek to expand the collection and have begun a project to digitise items from the collection and make them available online. This is a work-in-progress and we will be adding items to this site from now on.

If you have photographs or other material concerning Richmond’s past, we would love to hear from you. Perhaps you would like to donate items to the collection, or allow us to view the material and if suitable, borrow items for recording and adding to our digital archive. We would of course return the items to you in the same condition as we received them.

If you would like to learn more about the group, or become involved, please contact Andrea at 381-6615.

1890 — Richmond Joins the City

19/10/2021

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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. 
​
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.
richmond-petition-1889-90__1_.pdf
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File Type: pdf
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A Snapshot of Bingsland, 1879

20/2/2020

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In 1879, George Alfred Buck published a Christchurch and Suburban Directory. The 379-page directory offers a snapshot of Christchurch only 29 years after its founding. At this time there was no suburb of Richmond; this area was known as Bingsland, after Morice Bing (1830–1877) who had owned land in the area. By 1879, Bingsland was becoming more closely settled; the area’s growing population meant Bingsland was included in the directory as one of Christchurch’s suburbs, outside the city area bounded by the four town belts (now the four avenues).

In 1868, a Methodist Church had been established on Stanmore Road, on land donated by Mr Bing. The Bingsland School had opened on its Stanmore Road site in 1875. These developments reflected an increasing local population and were beginning to set the area apart from much of the rest of the largely rural surrounding area.
​
In the 14-page document below I have added some more information about the directory and Christchurch at the time. I have also transcribed the names of Bingsland residents from the directory, firstly in name order as they appear in the directory and then in order by street and lastly by occupation, where this has been given (about 10% of entries). Later in the document are some descriptions of the area around this time, followed by a series of newspaper articles transcribed from Papers Past, which illustrate some of the matters concerning Bingsland residents in 1879.
snapshot_of_bingsland-1879.pdf
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Mr Grantham's Class Photos: Richmond School, 1956–1974

13/9/2019

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Fifty years ago. This photo is of the combined Std 1, 2 & 3 classes at Richmond School, taken in 1969; one of a set of class photos donated by David Grantham, son of Tom Grantham who taught this class, as well as many others at Richmond School. The adult in the photo is not Mr Grantham, who disliked having his photo taken, but the school's headmaster at the time, Mr Maslin.

​In August David Grantham donated a set of nineteen Richmond School class photos, taken between 1956 and 1974, the period when David's father, Tom Grantham, was a teacher at the school. As well as ten formal class photos there are three staff groups and several other photos of sports and cultural groups, as well as a few informal photos taken on school outings. I have scanned these photos and combined them in a PDF document which is available below for viewing and/or downloading.

I have recorded pupils’ names underneath each scanned photo. I have transcribed these names as best I can; some of the handwriting is difficult to decipher. If people can help correct any spelling errors, add their own memories or other information about the photos, we would love to hear from you — please contact Avebury House: (admin@aveburyhouse.co.nz).
​
Our thanks to David Grantham for his generous gift. The photos are now stored with the Richmond History Group collection in the Richmond Room at Avebury House, along with a wide range other material recording Richmond's history.
richmond_school_class_photos-tom_grantham_1956-1974_final__2_.pdf
File Size: 14631 kb
File Type: pdf
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Avebury Park Historical Investigation & Assessment, 2010

17/8/2019

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Hubert Flesher in the grounds of Avebury House c.1905. 
Photo from Richmond History Group collection, Avebury House.
​​This 21-page document was prepared by Louise Beaumont in 2010 for the Christchurch City Council, and outlines the history and development of the what were once the grounds of Avebury House, now Avebury Park. The report nicely complements the 2000 report on the house itself (available below on this site) and includes several new historical photos of the house and grounds, as well as a detailed look at the landscape elements of the park.
The report’s date, August 2010, makes it a poignant reminder of how much things can change in a short time. Some of the photos show nearby buildings that are now gone. This is another precious document for anyone interested in the story of Avebury House & Park.
avebury_park_historical_investigation.pdf
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Leo Shaw’s Recollections of Richmond

14/11/2018

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Leo Shaw was a long-standing Richmond resident and well known among the community. In the 1990s, Leo made three audio tapes recording his memories of Richmond and surrounding districts over many years — Leo was born in 1914. These audio tapes are in the Richmond History Group collection at Avebury House, along with a number of recorded interviews with local residents carried out by Christine Thieme in 2008–9. It appears that so far, none of this material has been transcribed.
The document below includes a transcription of a talk Leo gave to the Shirley Probus club in 1997. It will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn about Richmond’s past. The photo below is the only one we have of Leo, as a 15-year old with his mother and father. If anyone knew Leo, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us at Avebury House (email: admin@aveburyhouse.co.nz, phone: (03) 381-6615).
leo_shaw-richmond_recollections-1.pdf
File Size: 464 kb
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Richmond School Roll of Honour

24/10/2018

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In April we posted an entry on this page about the Richmond School Roll of Honour. That article posed some questions about the board. After some further research we now have a better idea of board's history. The 10-page document below summarises these findings and tells the story of the Roll of Honour as we know it so far. 

Following the closure of Richmond School at the end of 2013, the Roll of Honour was moved to Avebury House, along with the school's academic honours board and a smaller WW2 memorial. All three items are available for viewing in the Gordon Prince room, downstairs at Avebury House.

If anyone has more information to share about the board or any of the 325 people commemorated there, please get in touch at Avebury House.

David Hollander
richmond_school_roll_of_honour_2019.pdf
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Stanmore Road, Richmond — 1940

16/7/2018

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This great piece of work, labelled “Richmond Village”, shows the layout of sections along the north end of Stanmore Road c.1940. North is at the right. The stretch of Stanmore Road runs from the corner of Draper St and Swanns Rd to its northern end at the intersection with North Avon Rd. The data was researched by Noeline Hansen and Shona Ward who were very active in the Richmond History Group based at Avebury House in the years before the earthquakes. The map was drawn by Ken Washington. The original document is large: 2500 x 460 mm and is on display in the Richmond Room, upstairs at Avebury House, 9 Eveleyn Couzins Ave.

On the map, residences are coloured pink and commercial properties are blue. Utilities are indicated in yellow. Where the residential occupiers (not necessarily the owners) of the properties have been identified, their names and occupation, if known, have been shown. Businesses show the name of the owner and the type of enterprise. The map makes for fascinating reading. As late as 1940 there are two blacksmiths in this one stretch of Stanmore Rd.

There is a post office marked at 323 Stanmore Rd. This building had previously been occupied by a fruiterer business — there are two photos of this shop dated 1927 in the history group collection at Avebury House. A section is shown as having been set aside for the construction of a post office on the eastern corner of Stanmore and North Avon Rds, but this was never built.

Bruce St used to connect Stanmore Rd and Pavitt St. The roadway still exists as a driveway immediately south of the St. Vincent de Paul building on Stanmore Rd, but sometime after 1954 (Bruce St appears in a Christchurch map of that date), the name was dropped and the road is not marked on modern maps. In 1940, the site of the St. Vincent de Paul shop was occupied by Morgan Davies, a cobbler, with Aldersley’s bakery immediately behind that to the west.

The butcher, Eric McPherson, moved from 321 Stanmore Rd, as shown on the map, to the shop at 75 North Avon Rd (at the north end of Stanmore Rd) in 1940.1

For many years there was a suburban police station at 245 Stanmore, known as Bingsland police station; the name was a carry-over from the earliest days of settlement in the area. The station, which was opened in 1879, retained that name until 1957, when it was changed to ‘North Avon’. The station moved to new premises at 45 North Parade in 1963, but the North Avon station closed altogether in 1968.2


Click on the picture above to see the map in detail.


Notes:
1  Interview with Noeline Hansen (née McPherson), Eric’s daughter.
2  Thomson, Barry, 1989. “Sharing the Challenge — A Social and Pictorial History of the
Christchurch Police District”, pp146–7.
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Launching the Rondino

12/4/2018

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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.

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Wedding Group, 79 North Avon Road, 1922

26/2/2018

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This photograph is a modern copy print of an original photograph, showing a group attending the wedding of Hilda Marjory Cusack and Gordon Robert Wilson in 1922. The photo was taken at 79 North Avon Road. There is some information recorded on the reverse of the print, which is summarized below:
79 North Avon Road. Richmond. Christchurch. 1922.
The wedding photo of Hilda Marjory Cusack and Gordon Robert Wilson.

The baby to the left of the group is Jeffrey Raymond Pentecost, held by his father, Samuel Pentecost J.P. and secretary to Dan Sullivan, Labour M.P. for Avon, 1919–47. The Pentecost family lived at 85 North Avon Road, and the photograph and information were donated by Mrs. Joan Pentecost, wife of Jeffrey.

Families occupying the four houses on the block between Stapletons Road & Petrie Street:
75 North Avon Road — Straws: two daughters.
79 North Avon Road — Cusack: four daughters.
85 North Avon Road — Pentecost: four daughters & one son.
89 North Avon Road — Ramsay: three daughters.


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James Arthur Flesher, 1865–1930

26/2/2018

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The photograph shows James Flesher in mayoral regalia, although it is not clear whether the photo was taken when he was mayor of New Brighton (1915–17) or Christchurch (1923–25). James Flesher lived in Richmond; the Flesher family owned Avebury House and land between the house and the river.

Biographical data based on information on the Christchurch City Libraries website:
James Arthur Flesher was born in Christchurch on 13 August, 1865, the son of William and Dorothy Flesher, who owned Avebury House. James was educated at Christ’s College and became a lawyer; he was admitted as a solicitor in 1898, and when he started his own legal firm the following year, he was admitted as a barrister.

In 1893 he was elected to the Christchurch City Council, representing the Richmond Ward. In 1900 he married Margaret Lucy England. They had two children. From 1915 to 1917 he was Mayor of New Brighton Borough. He was appointed borough solicitor in 1918, a position he held until his death.
In 1918 he was again elected to the Christchurch City Council and he became Chairman of the By-laws & Finance Committee. He remained a councillor till 1920, and in 1923 he was elected Mayor of Christchurch, a position he held for two years. In 1928 he was again elected to council and remained a councillor until his death in 1930. He was also elected to the Christchurch Tramway Board in 1906, was Chairman from 1913–1916, and was still a member of the board at the time of his death.

James was also a member of many other local boards and organisations. His obituary stated: “It was not the length of his public service, long as that was, or the number of positions he occupied, many as they were, that gave him his conspicuous place among the public men of the city, but the force and capacity that he constantly exhibited. He had the command of fact and the clear view of his object which keeps discussion to the direct and useful line.”
James died in 1930 aged 65 years and was buried in the Avonside Anglican Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Margaret, son, Herbert, and daughter, Mrs F. M. L. Sheppard. Flesher Avenue, which runs through the property once owned by the Flesher family, is named after him.

Here is a previous post about the Flesher family photo album covering the years 1909-11.

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