THE HEATHCOTE ROAD BOARD.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9834, 17 September 1897, Page 2

THE HEATHCOTE ROAD BOARD.

Br A.W. "Weekly Press and Referee." I.—The Board's History. The Heathcote Road District was constituted in 1864, the following gentlemen being the first members of the Board :—Hon. Wm. Montgomery (chairman), Messrs J. T. Fisher, R. Brunsden, W. Kennaway, and John Ollivier, and a system of local government was initiated that was to draw into its bustle and business names that have become household words in Canterbury and recognised throughout New Zealand as symbolic of business integrity. Prominent through the reports of bygone meetings are the names of Messrs John Ollivier, Andrew Duncan, S. Manning, E. Ensor, W. P. CJowlishaw, T. York, E. J. Palmer, R. Clephane, H. B. Kirk, J. H. Hopkins, Dr. Earle, H. P. Murray-Aynsley, William Henderson, and many others of equal note, and when the road district was also the Electoral District of Heathcote ifc was represented by Sir John Hall, Hon. William Rolleston, Mr J. S. Williams, now Mr Justice Williams, and Mr J. T. Fisher.

The early *ecords of the district show that the abolition .of the toll-bar at the Ferry bridge was as keenly fought by one section of the district, as it was ably defended by others, the leader of the toll-bar party being Mr John Ollivier, and the leader of the abolitionists Mr J. H. Hopkins, whose photo appears in this issue; the principal argument being that the district could not afford to lose the yearly rent of £6220 received from tolls, while the other side contended that the ratepayers could not afford to pay that amount extra for the use of the road. In 1874 the free road champions were successful, and the toll-bar disappeared for ever, although the toll house still remains a sample of the early simplicity of that pcviod; this was the last bridge in the province at which tolls were charged. The closing of the open drain that used to flow along the Ferry road seems to have been the cause of a battle royal between the district and the city of Christchurch, the main grievance being that Cbsjßtchurch was using this drain as a common sewer ; for the district we find Messrs John Ollivier, J. H. Hopkins and J. T. Fisher banded together to enforce the closingof thedrain. ,( Verily there were giants in those days." The drain was closed under an award of the Supreme Court, and filled in 1875 at a coat of £2250, the City Council having all the law costs to pay, besides one third of the cosfc of filling up the drain. Of the roads formed and bridges built by private persons at their own expense, the story would take too long to telL When these early pioneers put their hand to the plough they never seem to think of looking back. The words applied by Kipling to

their class and kind fits them in every particular, viz, :— . ~. , There's a legion that's never been listed, They carry no colours or crest, But split in a thousand detachments They're breaking a road for the rest. Gentlemen, across the lapse of years I offer you my congratulations on the good works you achieved, and can only wish that the latter traditions of the district may be worthy of the bright example set by you. Apropos of which I am reminded that one public work you contemplated, but could not afford, still appeals to your energetic successors. I refer to the short tunnel under the saddle between Sumner and Lyttelton. Your Engineer, Mr Dobson, in 1863 proposed a tunnel 550 yds long to connect a road of easy grade on each side. With this tunuel a fair cart-way would at once be opened between Christehurch and its seaport. A clean and practicable roadway as this would be would, at the present time, solve some of the freight problems that ore agitating the public mind and would be well worth the £8,000 that it would cost at present rate of wages. ll.—The Presext Board. The present Board consists of six members, each member representing a ward of the district as follows:—Mr G. H. McHaffie, chairman, representing the Avon ward, MiHenry Mace, representing Bromley ward, Mr Geo. Mitchell, representing Opawa ward, Mr Robert Malcolm, representing St. Martins ward, Mr John Martin, representing Hillsborough ward, and Mr William H. R. Dale, representing Valley ward ; Mr Alec Webster is clerk and surveyor. The Board's business is conducted on the ward system : that is, all the rates of a ward together with a pvo rala share of all other revenues are allocated to that ward and expended within its own boundaries. The area of the district is (12,500) twelve thousand five hundred acres, the rateable value (£373,000) three hundred and seventy three thousand pounds; and the annual amount of general and special rates levied aud collected is (£2200) two thousand two hundred pounds. The length of open roade in the district is forty miles, for the repairs of which 3400 cubic yards of road metal was last year taken Irom Sumner road, Rocky Point, and Cashmere quarries ; over a hundred casks of cement were used in laying concrete kerbing and channelling, while 8000 ft of stringy bark and 1500 ft of iron bark timbers were used in bridge work, and 5000 ft of totara were required for the renewal of culverts. With the exception of the carting of metal on to the roads, the work is all done by day labour, and the Board, through its chairman, has expressed its satisfaction with the system. Dux-ing the three years that the present Board has been in office, about three miles of new roads have been formed, and one and a half miles of the earliest formed roads re-graded, and within the same time land has been acquired over a length of two miles for the purpose of connecting or widening existing roods. lll.—The Board's System op ROADMAKING. The plan adopted in the formation of new roads is to lay off a forty-six foot roadway, with a ten foot path on each side ; a pitch of nine inches is given to the formation. This allows for three inches of hand-broken rubble to form the road-bed. The fault with higher pitched roads is that thejv elope has a tendency to make drivers keep on the crown only, instead of distributing the traffic over the whole road. A fall of not less than two inches to the chain is given, as clay watertables with a less fall than this retain the water, which induces rank growths of water-grass and thereby necessitates frequent cleanings • this process soon brings the channel to a dead level, and henceforth it becomes a nuisance and an offence to all who unhappily have to pass it. The back of the foot-path is formed on a level with the permanent crown of the roadway, and a slope of four inches given towards the watertables.- The rubble required for a road on a good clay bottom is twenty cubic yards to the oham, dml is laid on so as to cover thirteen feet each side of the crown With, one and a-half yards of screenings put over each chain of footpath, the cost under favourable circumstances —viz., levelness of ground, with solid bottom, and proximity to quarry—would be about £5 per chain, but with bad bottom to take out and clay to be rammed in, or with cuttings to take the formation through, it. would probably coat twice that sum. Though some of the early formed roads were made without much attention to pitch or grade, following as they do every undulation of the surface of the ground, and appear to have been tracks merely coated with shingle ; the foot or eighteen inches of shingle thus laid, when it was afterwards covered and bound with metal, formed a road-bed that could hardly be excelled