Christchurch’s legendary’ history

Press, 2 June 1981, Page 21

Christchurch’s legendary’ history

By

DERRICK ROONEY

Where was the office of the short-lived - -“Guardian” newspaper in which the Canterbury Provincial Council held its first meeting in September. 1853? An article accompanying Owen R. Lee’s drawing of the Provincial Buildings (May 23) placed the ‘’Guardian” building in Colombo Street, opposite the Oxford Hotel — which is where it was said to have been by the Christchurch historian, Johannes Andersen. However, this is disputed by Mr Walter Thacker, grandson of the proprietor of ■he short-lived newspaper lwhose , name was inadvertently printed as ''Thatcher"), and by the chairman of the promotion committee of the Provincial Buildings Board

(Mr W. J. A. Brittenden). Both men opt for different sites, making a total of three possibilities. According to Andersen’s book. "Old Christchurch,” the building, "which was very small, was situated at the corner of Chester Street and Colombo Street, opposite where the Oxford Hotel now stands.” According to Mr Thacker, the "Guardian” was on the site now occupied by the Salvation Army citadel. But according to Mr Brittenden, who appears to have ■ the last word on the matter, "documentation proves conclusively that the original but temporary legislative chamber was not in Colombo Street but in Chester' Street West, on a site now occupied

by the Cathedral .Grammar School.” He says that this is supported by the existence of a council lease agreement, and by contemporary accounts of the unpleasant walk across a muddy Cranmer Square to get to the council meetings. The “Guardian” was started by J. E. Thacker, who was said to have been at one time editor of the "Sligo Herald.” The first issue came out in June, 1852, and the venture lasted onlj’ a few months. Wigram's “Storj’ of Christchurch” quotes a description of the building by Henry Sewell, New Zealand’s first Premier: “The externals are shabby in the extreme — a low, desolate-looking wooden tenament, all by itself in

a potato-garden, a quarter of a mile at least from the inhabited part of the town, approached on an open, trackless common covered with fern and tussock-grass, barely passable in dry weather, and miserable in wet. The interior has been disguised neatly enough, but in a flimsy way, with canvas, papered-oak pattern, scarlet moreen covering the seats, which are of iron hardness.” The editorial writer of the "Lyttelton Times” was even less flattering: “A small space was devoted to the reporters; indeed the comfort with which honourable members had taken care to surround themselves, and the scant accommodation afforded to the press, was very marked. We hope that the honourable members will see that the reporters’ seats are railed off, and protected from the sou'westers which blow through the unweatherboarded planks.” Mr Thacker says the draughts were unlikely to have been caused by any deficiencies in the building methods of his grandfather, what probably happened is that after the paper folded Thacker and his staff removed some of the weatherboards and sold them. "These would have been pit-sawn black pine from Banks Peninsula, and would have been quite valuable,” he says.

Mr Thacker has one of the few surviving copies of the "Guardian,” but he says it is no help in locating the original site. The publisher’s note, in a bottom corner, says only that the paper was "Printed and published every Thursday by John E. Thacker at the office of the Christchurch Guardian, Chester Street, Christchurch.”

“Somebody is wrong about the site, but perhaps it doesn’t matter,” says Mr Thacker.

What he would like to uncover is the fate of his grandfather’s printing press, which came out with the Thacker family in the Sir George Seymour in 1850. After the “Guardian” folded. J. E. Thacker and his staff left for Melbourne, and the Gold Rush, and after his return to New Zealand Thacker settled in Okains Bay. He apparently never reentered the newspaper industry.

Several other points in the

May 23 article are disputed by Mr Brittenden, who writes: “Regrettably, legendry still persists in our. local history.

“No ‘ballots were cast’ in 1853 — voting was by show of hands and, if demanded by a. candidate, a poll a week later, when electors indicated their choice to the clerk; the council’ did not move to the town hall in 1857 (and to quibble a little, work on the Provincial Government Buildings did not start until January, 1858; the stone tower in Armagh Street was not in the first part of the complex — it was part of the second stage; it is hyperbolic to describe the delightful bay (or oriel) window in the wooden chamber as "huge.” “It is scarcely correct to describe the provincial buildings ‘standing alone’ in 1865. Photographs show buildings to the north, south and east (across the river). Only to the west, where church property sections stood empty, was there ‘loneliness.’ ‘No expense was spared’? Then why was Mountfort’s colourful ceiling deferred? No documentation has yet been unearthed to show that William Jewell and not Theodore Dethier (today de Thier) was responsible for the inlaid double doors. Perhaps Jewell worked for or with de Thier.”

. Some people may perhaps feel that it matters little whether the original 12 members were elected by ballot or by show of hands; and in this case the word "ballot” was used rather loosely.

There were other buildings in the vicinity of the council complex, but the major buildings — such as the art gallery — were not erected until much later. A contemporary description spoke of a "swampy, tussock paddock” running from Worcester Street to Armagh Street, and the photograph on this page of the south front of the complex, taken in 1859 by Dr Barker, shows a wilderness of tussock and flax in the foreground. “It looks,” wrote Andersen, “as if the buildings had been erected in an open paddock; and it was indeed little more than an open paddock ...” An interesting point about the bay window (which might, with a little artistic licence, be described as

“huge") is that it apparently served, on occasion, as a committee room — when some of the leaders of the council wanted to have a consultation they "retired” to the bay window’, drawing the heavy curtains to screen themselves from the eyes — and ears — of other members and the public.

The original Canterbury Provincial Council of 1853 had 12 members, and in 1854 the number was doubled. There were 26 members in 1857, 35 in 1861. and 44 in 1866. The last total, which included five members from the West Coast, was reduced to 39 when the Coast was given provincial status in 1867, and the total was unchanged until the provinces were abolished in 1876. In 1857, when the wooden Town Hall was built in High Street, the council voted a subsidy of £3OO for it, in return for the use of a front room and first claim on the use of the hall. One 1858 session was held there while the Provincial Buildings were under construction. Johannes Andersen, who spent more than 30 years of his working life in the Provincial Buildings, wrote quite unequivocally in his book that the doors of the stone chamber “were made by Jewell, long a dealer in New 7 Zealand woods and curios.” He obviously knew Jewell well, because he recounted several conversations with him about other matters. But it may well be that the doors were designed by de Thier, and that Jewell was merely the craftsman who converted the design into reality. The adjoining Bellamy’s has a special place in the natural history of Canterbury, for it was reputedly in a room above Bellamy's — once the coffee-room, later the superintendent’s room — where Julius von Haast articulated the first seven moa skeletons for the Canterbury Museum’s collection. At the end of 1866, Haast had run out of space for his museum collections, and he was given the use of the old Immigration building, which stood on the site now occupied by the courthouses. When he overflowed from this building, too, he was given the use of the room above-Bellamy's.