NZHistory, New Zealand history online - christchurch

Deans Bush memorial olive tree

This memorial olive tree in Deans Bush, planted in 1982, commemorates the sacrifice and service of the men of the 18th Battalion and Armoured Regiment of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, who served between 1939 and 1945.

Credit:

Francis Vallance, 2014.

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George Chaney

George Chaney was born in Christchurch in 1886. The son of Randolph and Sarah Chaney, he grew up in the Christchurch suburb of Riccarton, where his father worked at the local freezing works.

The Chaneys had strong ties with the Canterbury region. George’s grandfather, a stonemason, had been recruited to work on the proposed Christchurch cathedral. He arrived from England in 1850 aboard the Randolph – the second of four ships that brought settlers to the province for the Canterbury Association. George’s father, named after the ship, was born during the voyage to New Zealand.

George was working at the Canterbury By-Product Company in Sockburn when he enlisted in the army in August 1916. After completing his training at Featherston Military Camp in Wairarapa, he embarked on the Port Lyttelton on 7 December 1916 and arrived in Plymouth, England, nine weeks later.

Posted to the 3rd Battalion, Canterbury Regiment, George participated in fighting around the Belgian town of Ypres (Ieper) in 1917, some of the heaviest experienced by New Zealand troops on the Western Front. This included the bloody attacks at Passchendaele in October, during which 845 New Zealanders were killed on a single day. Having survived the carnage, George was sent for further training at the School of Instruction in early November. He rejoined his unit on 20 November but was killed nine days later. George is one of 378 men of the New Zealand Division with no known graves who are remembered at the Buttes New British Cemetery (NZ) Memorial at Polygon Wood, near the town of Zonnebeke, north-east of Ieper.

Further information

Credit:

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19180228-40-19

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Addington special constables' camp in 1913

The former Addington showgrounds (now AMI Stadium) was used as a camp for mounted special constables during the 1913 strike (click on thumbnail to see full image).

In Christchurch the strike was largely centred on Lyttelton. When attempts were made to load ships on 18 November, strikers invaded the wharves and forcibly stopped work. The next day special constables began enrolling and a camp was set up in the city, at Addington. After a period of training and planning the specials went into action early on the morning of 25 November. A party of around 800 mounted and foot special constables made their way over the Port Hills and took over the Lyttelton wharves without any fighting in a surprise raid.

The authorities in Christchurch and Auckland learned from the experiences of Wellington. Specials were concentrated, trained and organised in camps before being sent out in large, well-disciplined groups in well-planned operations to take over the wharves. This avoided the violent clashes seen in Wellington, where badly organised groups of specials had charged large groups of strike supporters.

See more images of Christchurch during the 1913 strike here, including specials marching along Moorhouse Ave and Oxford Terrace (Flickr)

Credit:

Auckland Weekly News, 3 December 1913

Auckland City Libraries
Ref: AWNS-19131204-50-1

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Christchurch International Airport

Christchurch International Airport (1955-60)

New Zealand enters the jet age

It took a long time for commercial aviation to conquer New Zealand’s isolation. The first long-distance seaplanes made much-publicised visits in the late 1930s and until the 1950s our international airports were really seaports, with Solent flying boats roaring in and out of the major ports’ more sheltered stretches. That changed with the big long-haul landplanes, the propeller-driven Constellation and then the jets, from 1963 the de Havilland Comet and from 1965 the Boeing 707, Douglas DC8 and Vickers VC10.

These planes forced the pace of airport development. Auckland’s Mangere (1965) was the big one, but Christchurch’s Harewood, initially developed in the late 1930s, took off first. It became an international airport in 1950, three years before it hosted the epic Coronation Year Great London to Christchurch Air Race. The Christchurch International Airport now handles about 121,000 aircraft movements carrying 5½ million passengers each year. Hardly anyone travels by sea for business any more, though pleasure-seeking by cruise ships is taking off.

Until quite recently you could see, almost buried by those later extensions, Paul Pascoe’s modernist control tower, with its long, curved façade and folded and cantilevered canopy. Its clean lines harked back to the dawn of the mass-travel era, when British long-range jets competed with American and when the privileged few dressed up for their flights. It has gone the way of the Constellation and the Comet. Between 2009 and 2013 the airport bowled the ‘old’ domestic terminal to replace it with something more in keeping with the recently enlarged international terminal. Airports are like that, showpieces for regional economies desperate to grab tourist dollars and appear more business-friendly than the city down the road.

Further information

This site is item number 97 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Cafe Cecil (Flickr)

Other images: Albert Hsu (Wikimedia), Chris Wall (Flickr), Christchurch City Libraries (Flickr) and Christchurch City Libraries (Flickr)

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1955-60

Kate Sheppard’s House

Kate Sheppard’s House (1888)

A suffrage pioneer

In the 1890s ‘first-wave feminism’ made significant gains for New Zealand women. Traditionally, the highpoint is the attainment of women’s suffrage in 1893, when New Zealand, starting its long tradition of patting itself on the back for being a social laboratory, claimed credit for being the first nation to let women vote in national elections. The picky might observe that we were still a colony and historian James Belich cautions against over-emphasising the suffrage elite, replacing Great Men with Great Women, as it were. Suffrage has to be seen in context with late Victorian women’s other gains. Elizabeth Yates of Onehunga became the British Empire’s first elected female mayor, women's organisations proliferated and women began to enter some professions. The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894, the Married Women’s Property Act of 1884 and the Divorce Act of 1898 also improved their lot.

But no amount of revisionism can dethrone Liverpool-born Kate Sheppard (1847-1934) and her supporters, who included former premier Sir John Hall. Kate Malcolm, who had arrived in Christchurch as a young woman, married merchant Walter Sheppard and, like Rutherford Waddell’s supporters, came to the franchise campaign through church-based activities such as the temperance movement.

Walter and Kate moved into their new house at 83 Clyde Road, Fendalton, early in 1888. It would be Kate’s home during those eventful years, a comfortable, slate-roofed wooden villa set well back from the road in what was then a more rural suburb.

Still privately owned, the house and gardens are now also used for public functions. Sheppard adorns the $10 note and a street near Parliament was renamed after her, but her most impressive public memorial is Margriet Windhausen’s massive bronze Kate Sheppard National Memorial, unveiled at Oxford Terrace beside the Avon in 1993 by New Zealand’s first female governor-general, Dame Catherine Tizard. Here, as resolutely as Iron Curtain icons, suffragists Sheppard, Amey Daldy, Meri Te Tai Mangakahia, Ada Wells, Harriet Morison and Helen Nicol step fearlessly into the future, behind their electoral petition.

Further information

This site is item number 66 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Books

Judith Devaliant, Kate Sheppard, Penguin, Auckland, 1992
Jill Pierce, The suffrage trail, National Council of Women, New Zealand, Wellington, 1995

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Images of the house: Schwede66 (Wikimedia)

Memorial image: Christchurch City Libraries (Flickr)

Historic image:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-041798-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1888

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (1901-05)

The southern bastion of Irish Catholicism

You have George Bernard Shaw’s word on it. This is/was Christchurch’s finest building. In 1934 when the writer stopped at Christchurch on his New Zealand tour, he extravagantly praised a cathedral he had just seen, comparing it favourably to the work of the great Italian renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi. His listeners assumed he meant the Anglican cathedral in the Square. No, he said, he was talking about the other one, down by the (now demolished) gasworks, Francis William Petre’s big basilica.

By then most had forgotten the building’s difficult birth. ‘Lord Concrete’, as they called Petre, was often absent during the construction period and Bishop Grimes, short-tempered and a born interferer, claimed that Petre had misled him about the true cost of the Wunderlich ceiling, Whatever the cause, Grimes got Richard Seddon to rush a special bill through Parliament so the money needed to complete the building could be borrowed.

The towers, cupolas and domes of Petre’s basilicas stud the South Island’s eastern seaboard. You will find magnificent examples in Dunedin (St Patrick’s, South Dunedin, 1879-94), Oamaru (St Patrick’s, 1893-1918), Timaru (Basilica of the Sacred Heart, 1910) as well as Waimate’s St Patrick’s church (1908-09, tower 1912), along with many other fine ecclesiastical buildings. Although they reflect Petre’s genius, they also remind us of the wealth of the South Island and of the importance of the Catholic Church there a century ago, As we saw with Pompallier, Catholics were not always welcome in colonial New Zealand, and Irish Catholics even less so. But the gold rushes brought large numbers into New Zealand through the Australian colonies, adding people to the wealth being amassed by a Catholic clique of big pastoralists. The proportion of Catholics who attended church regularly rose from about 40% in 1880 to 60% in 1920.

Then came an act of God. On 4 September 2010 a magnitude 7.1 earthquake severely damaged this and many other historic buildings in and around Christchurch. Worse was to come. On 22 February 2011 a shallower shock munted the building. Aftershocks increased the damage. Engineers have removed some items from the wrecked building, which remains fenced off, too dangerous to enter. Its ultimate fate is unknown.

Further information

This site is item number 73 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Greg O'Beirne (Wikimedia)

Other colour images: Rabinus Flavus (Wikimedia), Christchurch City Libraries (Flickr), David Jones (Wikimedia), Schwede66 (Wikimedia) and Geof Wilson (Wikimedia)

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: 1/1-019441-G, 1/1-009019-G and 1/1-009021-G (all taken by the Steffano Webb Photographic Studio)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1901-05

Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers

Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers (1859-65)

Built to last?

When the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 became British law, the colony’s 30,000 European inhabitants found themselves ruled by a governor, a two-house General Assembly, six elected provincial superintendents and six provincial councils. The councils got down to business in 1853 and functioned like a watered-down version of contemporary American, Australian and Canadian states and provinces. They had more influence over the daily lives of their citizens than central government but by the early 1870s railways, the electric telegraph and steamships were knitting the colony together more effectively. The smaller provinces were struggling and Premier Julius Vogel’s huge development and immigration schemes really needed one central authority to work effectively.

We are inclined to shake our heads over the demise of the six provinces and their four breakaways, one of which. Southland, had its government furniture seized by creditors. Yet as historian James Belich suggests, the council buildings in Canterbury and Otago (now demolished) show that ‘these structures, and perhaps the system they symbolised, were built to last’. Canterbury built its provincial parliament in three stages, each portion reflecting increasing prosperity. The oldest, in the middle of Durham Street, dates from 1859. Its high point is the wooden chamber. Next came the Armagh Street frontage (1861). Four years later they built in stone, completing Benjamin Mountfort’s supreme flourish, the magnificent Stone Chamber and the river-front Bellamy’s (its name was that of the House of Commons watering hole, showing the seriousness with which the Canterbury politicians took their work).

The Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers occupies a special place in the history of New Zealand heritage. In 1928 Parliament passed an Act specifically to protect the Stone Chamber, New Zealand’s finest High Victorian Gothic interior. Nine years later new legislation protected the rest of the complex.

But was it built to last? The old complex was doing fine until the September 2010 and subsequent 2011 earthquakes and aftershocks first damaged and then munted it, wreaking especially heavy damage on the masonry sections. It remains fenced off awaiting a final decision on its future. A recent engineering assessment has shown that parts of it will have to be rebuilt.

Related place

At the corner of Victoria, Montreal and Salisbury Streets, 400 m north-west of the Provincial Chambers, you will find a clock that briefly graced the Provincial Council complex. Since 1897 it has been mounted in a tower that memorialised Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. The Victoria Clock Tower was also badly damaged in the earthquakes, but in 2013 seemed likely to soon be repaired.

Further information

This site is item number 24 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Books

Ian Lochhead, A dream of spires, Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 1999
W.P. Morrell, The provincial system in New Zealand 1852-76, Whitcombe & Tombs, Christchurch, 1964

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Gavin McLean, 2001

Other contemporary images:

1) Gavin McLean, 2) Greg O'Beirne (Wikimedia), 3) Ric Hayman (Flickr), 4) Greg O'Breine (Wikimedia), 8) Schwede66 (Wikimedia)

Historic images:

1) Alexander Turnbull Library - 1/4-002584-G (photographer: Alfred Charles Baker), 2) Canterbury Heritage (Flickr), 3) Alexander Turnbull Library - 1/1-003975-G
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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Neuve-Chapelle road roller

This road roller was imported by the Christchurch Tramway Board in 1915. If anyone can provide information about what happened to this roller after the First World War please email [email protected]

It bears the name 'Neuve-Chappelle' which is the name of a French town where a First World War battle took place on 10-13 March 1915. These articles from the Press tell the story.

Reported 29 April 1915:

Mr James Macalister of Invercargill, sole New Zealand agent for Messrs Richard Garrett and Sons, Leiston received word on Tuesday of the death of Captain Stephen Garrett who was killed in action at Neuve-Chapelle on March 15th. The late Captain Garret commanded the H Company of the 4th Suffolks, comprised almost entirely of men from Garrett's works, no fewer than one thousand of whom are at present fighting for their country. The latest production from the Garrett works for New Zealand is a steam road roller for the Christchurch City Council due in the Mamari in a few days.

Reported 10 June 1915:

The new road roller imported by the Christchurch Tramway Board ran its official trials yesterday morning. This roller has had an interesting history. Twelve months ago James Macalister, Ltd. of Invercargill, the successful tenderers for the roller sent an order for it to Richard Garrett, and Sons, Ltd., Leiston, Suffolk. Work on the roller had hardly been commenced when the war broke out and one-third of Garrett's iron enlisted for service at the front, including Captain Stephen Garrett, a member of the firm. Then the British Government commandeered the works to supply tractors for the Army in France, and work on the roller was suspended. Finally, after many months of delay, it was completed and shipped to New Zealand, but on the voyage the vessel conveying it was chased, though unsuccessfully, by an enemy submarine. Captain Stephen Garrett and many of his firm's men were killed in the operations at Neuve-Chapelle, and in memory of this the roller has has been named Neuve-Chapelle. The roller more than comes up to the Tramway Board's expectations. Guaranteed to travel seven mile an hour, it did an average of 15 in the trials yesterday. It is a specially constructed roller with springs on the front and back axles.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/1-004442-G
Photographer: Henry Norford Whitehead
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

Thanks to Olwyn and Bruce for letting us know about this memorial.

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memorials

'Join together' song, 1974 Commonwealth Games

Hear ‘Join together’.

The 10th Commonwealth Games, held in Christchurch in January 1974, was an odd coupling of 1970s cosmic harmony and cut-throat competition. The song that caught the mood of this Woodstock in tracksuits was Steve Allen’s hummable, even uplifting, anthem ‘Join together’.

Promo song

Steve Allen’s career was in full flight in 1973 when he wrote 'Join together'. Still in his early 20s, Allen (real name Alan Stevenson) had won the RATA award for Best Male Vocalist, released two albums and earned a number one hit for a memorable cover of the Carpenters’ song ‘Top of the world’. His ambition was to write and sing his own material.

Allen remembers bashing out the tune of 'Join together' on a piano in about half an hour: ‘As with all good songs, it fell into place. The words were predetermined; it was just a case of finding a simple tune to string them together.’

'Join together' was recorded at the EMI studios in central Wellington in the winter of 1973. Its backing track was created by one guitarist, bassist and drummer, with Allen on keyboards. The song’s big production feel with the fat drum sounds came later when the vocals of the seven-strong New Zealand Maori Theatre Trust were overdubbed. Allen found himself with a hit in September 1973 after winning a $300 prize in a Studio One contest to find a promotional pop song for the Commonwealth Games to be held in Christchurch early in the following year.

The song was played constantly in the months leading up to the games. It went as high as number two on the NZBC’s Pop-o-Meter Top 20, just failing to unseat Helen Reddy’s ‘Delta Dawn’.

The very friendly games

The games opened on 24 January 1974. In front of a crowd of 35,000 Allen and a massed choir sang ‘Join together’ and ‘What the world needs now is love’. Thousands of children wearing plastic capes of red, white and blue made a living games symbol in the middle of the Queen Elizabeth II stadium. This bright display was for the benefit of a TV audience watching pioneering colour broadcasts. Allen later recalled 'being stuck in the middle of an awful lot of people, a long march and being pretty chuffed to be singing my own material'.

A well-oiled publicity machine minted the term ‘The Friendly Games’. Christchurch police chief Gideon Tait said he wanted foreign competitors and visitors to get the impression they were visiting ‘an angelic city’ free of crime and violence.

Sometimes the games were a little too friendly. Late-night communing between athletes led to claims that Allen’s hippy-dippy 1970s lyric ‘the games are for the fostering of peace and love’ was being taken too literally. There was the same free-and-easy mood of the previous year’s Great Ngaruawahia Pop Festival.

From all parts of the world

Allen's lyrics spoke of Commonwealth unity, but there had been rumblings about the games. In April 1973 the Labour prime minister, Norman Kirk, prevented a possible boycott by black African nations when his government halted a rugby tour of New Zealand by the Springboks from apartheid South Africa.

The song's line that ‘people black and white will come from all parts of the world’ underlined the mission to preserve Commonwealth unity. The credibility of Allen’s song was enhanced when the South Africans later banned it because of so-called unsuitable words such as ‘freedom, race, creed, peace, war, black and white’.

Post-games

'Join together' became a cliché, even an albatross for Allen. In 1978 he was quoted as saying, ‘I sometimes wish everybody would just forget all about "Join together". It has been over-emphasised – people think it’s all I’ve ever done because it had so much publicity.’

Today, Allen says he was quoted out of context but agrees that he was frustrated that none of his other songs received the acknowledgment they deserved: ‘It’s nice to be remembered for "Join together", but nice to be remembered for other things as well.’

The Cover for 'Join Together', 1974.

Words and music for 'Join together' are provided with copyright permission from Sandy Music and Viking Sevenseas Limited.

This page is based on an article by Redmer Yska that appeared in North and South, 1994.

Download the music and lyrics for 'Join Together' (700k, pdf).

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22 February 2011 earthquake internment site

The internment site at Avonhead Park Cemetery, Christchurch, for victims of the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. It was unveiled at a ceremony on 21 February 2012 and opened to the public the following day.

From the Christchurch City Council website:

‘[The inner circle] area is reserved for the burial of the unidentified remains held by the Chief Coroner following the close of the victim identification process and to commemorate the four unfound victims of the earthquake. The term unfound is preferred by some of the victim’s families.

Exposed aggregate paths flanked by Timaru bluestone entrance columns lead towards a Timaru bluestone plinth with a central Timaru bluestone feature.

The central feature is intended as a gift from the City to the four unfound victims and is the centrepiece of the design. It includes six granite plaques with the following text repeated in English, Filipino, Maori, Russian, Spanish and Braille: Etched in our City’s memory, never to be forgotten. The City of Christchurch’

Read more about the memorial here (CCC website).

Credit:

Main image: Francis Vallance, 2012

Other images: Francis Vallance, 2012; Andy Palmer, 2012.

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