Richmond History

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.

Shirley Intermediate School 1940 Project

17/1/2018

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This remarkable document came to light during preparations for the Shirley Intermediate School 75th jubilee in 2009. The document had been prepared by pupils at the school in 1940, as part of New Zealand’s centennial celebrations of that year. The entire school took part in a survey of their local district; the document’s 321 pages are divided into four sections: Historical, Geographical, Social and Economic.

The survey was carried out in accordance with official guidelines of the time; all the school pupils were involved and the entire document, apart from four typewritten introductory pages, was produced by the pupils. All the material is handwritten and all the many illustrations were prepared by the pupils, including 26 B&W photographs, which were taken and produced by the school photographic club.

The document offers a fascinating glimpse into our part of Christchurch in the mid-20th century, as seen and recorded by its children.

The entire document has been scanned and reproduced as a PDF file. We have prepared four files of each of the sections:
1. Historical Section: 62 pages, 19 MB.