FLOODS AND THE TOWN HALL

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16508, 25 March 1914, Page 12

FLOODS AND THE TOWN HALL

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,---Several of your correspondents have called your attention to what has happened in your beautiful city at various times in its history. With your kind permission, l will relate a little more, and get back to the great flood of February 4, 1.808. About the end of January there had been much nor'-wost weather, and on February 1 and 2 the, mountains to the west and north of Canterbury were enveloped in black murky ciouds. Rain came on in Christchurch on .Monday inorniug, and did not cease till Thursday morning. It came down in torrents, and (he fears of tho residents of Christchurch were that the Waimakariri would overflow and come down and wash us all out to sea. Howover, matters were not quite as bad as that, and what I am about to state now are facts.

The river Avon rose rapidly, and was bank to bank at midnight on February \i, and at nine o'clock on the morning of February 4 tho water was on top of the floor of the bridge at Lane s flourmil! on tho island opposite Hereford Street and Oxford Terrace. At 30 a.m. I came in contact with Mr Frank Pavitt. who was engineer for the city. He asked me if I 'would mark with a pencil on a post adjoining the mill the height the water reached at noon, two feet above the bridge, and, as it happened, that was about the time the flood was at its highest. As soon as T saw that the water began to get lower, 1 made for tho Triangle through water fully a. foot deep. and it was rushing by the bank and Fisher's Corner down Hereford Street and through the Square and by Cook and Ross's Corner, where it was much deeper. At the Golden Fleece corner it was a- roaring torrent. What the depth of water was whore the band stand is now I would not presume to say. By hard struggling and tumbling about, and some good duckings, several of us venturesome ones got back to Miss Skilicorn's corner, and there we found someone had brought a boat, and in a. very few minutes it was loaded with as merry a crew as could be found anywhere. Every man had a piece of batten or long, stout stick for uso in working against stream. Away we went with very little trouble straight through the Square, and past Cookham House, and stopped just about there, and turned round and worked our way back as best we could to the place we started from. So much for the flood. Now as to the Town Hail site. I have nothing whatever to do with it. But as one of the early settlers, who came to Christchurch in the fifties, and look on your beautiful city with pride and pleasure, I cannot rafrain from expressing my opinion that it will be a great mistake to build a hall on that low piece of "round, when.there is such a magnificent site on tho north side of that lovely Avon. Now that the citizens of Christchurch are about to have a Town Hall, by all means build it on the very highest and roost commanding ground procurable, and where flood waters will in all probability never reach. —I am. etc., WALTER. G. RUTLAND. Tcmuka, March 23.