‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ – The Turkish Bath Culture in Christchurch, NZ

The health benefits, cleanliness and exoticism of the Turkish Bath so appealed to Canterbury settlers that it became the height of fashion in the 1880s. Today we enjoy city operated spa facilities and hot tubs in our homes that owe their existence to the development of the Victorian Turkish Bath Movement.

New Zealand’s Most Beautiful Street 1932

An open field along the west side of Manchester street, bounded by a row of well-grown English Poplars and known as the Circus Paddock, was regularly used for touring circuses which came to town.

The Canterbury Ladies’ Slaves

Imagine you were born 100 years ago… what job would you have done? If you are female, part of the working class and living in England, then there is a one in three chance that you would be part of the largest women’s industry in the Kingdom – domestic service. If you are under fifteen…

The Triangle – Noxious Exhalations, a Precocious Wastrel and a Special Earthquake

“William Wilson was formerly a cabbage dealer in Canterbury; but fourteen years ago he was poor, whereas now he is rich, a circumstance attributable to a lucky speculation in a piece of land called the Triangles, at Christchurch, which was offered to more than one, previously to being bought for £200 by Wilson, who, unlike…

The Cabman’s Last Stand and the Triumph of the Taxi

For as far back as 1856, when the first hansom cab plied the streets of the Christchurch, the cabbie has been an important part of the city centre, conveying visitors and locals alike from the extremities of town into and around the burgeoning hub. There were cab stands at the Railway Station on the South…

Notes on a Journey: Ōtautahi

“In the bay in which we landed, we found two or three miserable primitive Maori cabins, inhabited by half-a-dozen helpless old creatures and a few diseased children — forming a pa named Rapaki.”

“The Publican and the Sinner.”

The story of a rugby mad church cleric, his neglected wife and a widowed publican. Read time approximately 26 minutes. He was a widower and father of two children. She was a cleric’s wife, temporarily released from her duties as wife and mother, with the novelty of time on her hands. In the 1880s, life…

Antigua Street Bridge – from the beginning until 1945

“Bridges are as much a distinctive part of the Christchurch landscape as its well-planted appearance and its old Gothic style provincial buildings. The chance which placed the city by the river Avon has made possible in these later days the special beauty of its river banks, but it has also made necessary a great number of bridges, for until they were built the convolutions of the river were a considerable obstacle to traffic.”

Government Building Worcester Street – Building for the Future

The construction of government buildings have long attracted opinion and criticism and the Italian Renaissance style Government Buildings on the corner of Worcester street and Cathedral Square were no different. Cabinet passed the plans for the construction of the new Government Buildings on 28 June 1910. They would be built on the site of the…

Was Christchurch the birthplace of Mary Poppins?

Almost a century ago, the story of Mary Poppins and the Match-Man was published for the first time – in Christchurch’s afternoon newspaper, The Sun.

But how did the story of the world’s most famous nanny first find its way into a Christchurch newspaper? To answer this, we need to delve into the early life of an Australian girl, Mary Poppins’ creator, P. L. Travers.

Tram vs Bus in 1930s Crush

The busiest intersection in the central city heaves under a rush of pedestrians, buses, trams, cyclists and private motor cars, pushing passed each other as they head for various parts of the city.

A Great Pilgrimage Over the Clouds

Imagine an event so exciting, so spectacular, that 38 trains were required travelling at 28 minute intervals to convey curious sightseers to Lyttelton in order to witness it.
The roads from Christchurch were chock-a-block with cars travelling in first gear, with many people choosing to walk over the hill roads on foot. On the morning of the 3rd January 1838…

Christchurch Gardens – Early History

“Christchurch people of the younger generations and strangers to the city who wander among the ordered prettinesses of the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, and pace along the pleasant winding paths between old-world blooms and old-world trees, can scarcely realise that little more than 50 years ago the place whereon all this beauty grows was a waste, yet so it was.”

Port Lyttelton – ‘a mean, insignificant little place’

This land-locked port of Lyttelton – called occasionally Port Cooper and sometimes Port Victoria – is the main, or rather the only, entrance to the Province of Canterbury. The surrounding hills, which are entirely volcanic, vary in height from 2000 ft, to 6000 ft, and bear, on close inspection, very palpable marks of calcination. The…