Ferry mead was busy traffic centre in 1860s

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 13

Ferry mead was busy traffic centre in 1860s

(By

W. J. A. BRITTENDEN)

This 1894 photograph (14A) of the Heathcote River and Ferrymead is not well known. The one taken by Dr Barker in December, 1863, and showing the tin lock-up, the police sergeant’s cottage, Ferrymead Hotel, refreshment rooms, wharf equipment and goods shed is usually reproduced in illustrations.

Nevertheless, this Burton shot, from the Alexander Turnbull Library collection, shows Ferrymead in its inbetween years. Earlier (25 to 35 years earlier) this had been a very busy spot indeed; today it is busy again and as the Ferrymead Project develops it is going to become more lively but, when this photograph was taken. Ferrymead was settling into, its period of peace and quiet as a backwater lacking the hustle and bustle of its first 20 years. By land and water The nodal point of the Lyttelton - Christchurch line of communication it had seen traffic come over the Bridle Path (just visible in the left background), down to the first ferry (just between the fisherman and the camera) or to the second ferry, crossing the river at an angle in front of Ferrymead, the house on the right. Some would have come as pedestrians, skirting the valley to avoid the swamps. Others kept to the hill-crest to come down nt G’en e 'g while others followed the Maori Track today’s Port Hills Road and crossed the Heathcote at Wilsons Road. The third route taken through Ferrymead in the early days was by water. In fact, Captain Day’s Flirt, the first commercial vessel on the Lyttelton - Christchurch trade, sailed up the harbour, round into Sumner Nook and, when the bar was right, into the Estuary but took the alternative Avon, instead of the Heathcote, to Christchurch. It was not until a

little later that the superior virtues of the Heathcote were realised. The centre of all this activity, pedestrian, vehicular, marine, and after December, 1863, that of the FerrymeadChristchurch railway, was near the two houses shown in the photograph. Within cooee of this spot probably passed 90 per cent of settlers entering Christchurch between 1850 and 1868. Ferryman’s house On the left is Riverslea, the home of the Dales whose name was spelt Deal, so it appears, when they first arrived in Wellington. James Dale was not the first, but was certainly the best-known of the ferrymen at Heathcote. His home commenced as a very modest little cottage but was added to over the years and became a very substantial two-storey residence situated approximately where the store shed of the miniature railway is today. It was pulled down, I understand, about 1930 but I should like to be corrected on that date. Ferrymead itself was a pre-fabricated house erected by James Townsend.

Riverslea has gone but, thanks largely to the efforts and love of the place possessed by the late Mr Leonard Shearman, Ferrymead remains in good order, even though he did remove the gables. One day, it is hoped, it may become an Historic Places reserve. Up to 1870, Ferrymead was busy; for the last 100 years (50 of them as a tomatogrowing glasshouse property under Mr Shearman) it has been, as it were, in c—et, peaceful retirement. The wharf piles from which the decking was removed when the railways withdrew are liable to rot away within a dozen years. Once 100 yards long, this wharf carried four lines of sft 3in Irish broad gauge railway track fastened to clumsy iron chairs with oak chocks, and boasted three crane derricks and a steam crane. Across the river on the right of the photograph there was, about 1880—I am not

sure of the precise dates—a race track. But on this flat, earlier, Dixon had built the Maid on Avon and the Quiver while Jackson had built the Theresa and an unnamed and possibly unfinished schooner. In our photograph the

main stream, even at low tide, appears fairly deep. This channel was marked by stakes put in place by the well-known Captain Joe Day, son of the original Captain Day of Day’s Bay, Wellington and of the Flirt.