Naming The Streets

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 27 (Supplement)

Naming The Streets

The story of how Christchurch nearly had wider streets, and the amusing way In which the streets were named was told by Edward Jollie, the surveyor who laid out the plan of Christchurch, In his reminiscences published 50 years ago. Mr Jollie, who came to New Zealand in 1841 as a cadet surveyor, later explored many parts of North Canterbury, and his name was given to Jollie’s Pass. “The survey of Christchurch was pleasant, easy work,” he wrote. “I lived in Scroggs’s grass house at “The Bricks’ (near the corner of Barbadoes street and Oxford terrace), and the six men who were with me were in a weatherboard hut close by. (Mr Scroggs was a surveyor, who resigned and returned to England when Mr Jollie arrived.) The day was, of course, spent in work, and in the evening I had eel fishing, pig hunting, or quail shooting in the

neighbourhood. Quails were plentiful, and I shot many on what is now the site of Christchurch.

“I soon had my proposed plan of Christchurch ready for Captain Thomas’s inspection,” continued Mr Jollie. “He approved of it except as to one or two parts, in which I had indulged in a little ornamentation, such as crescents. These were pronounced ‘gingerbread,’ and I was not sorry to give them up for something more practical; but Thomas made one change which I have always regretted. I had proposed that several of the streets, instead of being one chain wide, should be wide enough to admit of their being planted with trees. Thomas would not agree to this, but afterwards, when the work was nearly finished, he gave me leave to widen one or two of the principal streets if it could be done without

materially delaying the completion of the survey, but it was then impossible to do it. “On March 18, 1850, the map of Christchurch was finished, and a copy sent to the association in London. “The names of the streets of the three towns (Lyttelton, Sumner, and Christchurch) were taken from bishoprics, and this is how the baptism was done. The map being completed, Thomas, with his gold spectacles on and a “Peerage’ in his hand, read out a name that he fancied, and if he thought it sounded well, and I also thought so, it was written on the map. “I have often been asked why so few English titles were given to Christchurch. The explanation is this. The Lyttelton map was finished, and the first dealt with. Sumner followed. The result was that those two towns had used up most of the tiptop English titles, and for

Christchurch there was scarcely anything left but Ireland and the colonies.”