Blackheath Place

Press, 20 March 1982, Page 15

Blackheath Place

Blackheath Place, a group of 10 English-style terrace houses in Durham Street, is a unique, if untypical, remnant of Christchurch’s early domestic architecture.

Built by an emigrant bricklayer, Frank Hathaway Hitchings, to designs inspired by memories of the rows of terrace houses in the London suburbs where he grew up, the houses are today a distinctive feature of their largely commercial area. The oldest in the row are some years into their second century, but their facade has changed little, though time has given them a patina of Victorian raffishness.

They are the only surviving examples in the city of their style of architecture. Their builder, Hitchings, was born in Clerkenwell, London, in 1843. After his marriage he lived in Blackheath before emigrating to New Zealand, and it was from there that he took the name for his houses, and perhaps the design, too. Hitchings sailed to New Zealand in 1869, with his wife and two children; the family rented rooms in Montreal Street, and lived there for some years. It is not known when he acquired the land in Durham Street, but he began building the terrace houses in 1876,