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Where the recreation ground in Christchurch is there’s a road that runs alongside it, Sopers Lane, there used to be an air raid shelter that used to run about 100 feet along there and the people ...
cc1fc0c2-c0db-4de1-9992-b41e2385df3b. An account of Christchurch during WW2 including coastal defence, anti-tank island and civil defence
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- First Inhabitants
- Early European Contact
- The First European Settlements
- The Canterbury Settlement
- New Arrivals
- Settling in
- Towards Independence
- Canterbury — A Province
- Transport Problems
- The Boom Years
The first people to live in the place now known as Christchurch were moa hunters, who probably arrived there as early as AD 1000. The hunters cleared large areas of mataī and tōtara forest by fire and by about 1450 the moa had been killed off. North Island Māori (Ngati Māmoe and later Ngāi Tahu) arrived in Canterbury between 1500 and 1700. The rema...
On 16 February 1770 Captain James Cook in his ship the Endeavour first sighted the Canterbury peninsula. He thought it was an island, and named it Banks Island after the ship’s botanist, Joseph Banks. It was probably not until 1815 when sailors from the sealing ship Governor Bligh landed that Europeans first set foot on Banks Peninsula. In 1827 Cap...
Captain William Rhodes first visited in 1836. He came back in 1839 and landed a herd of 50 cattle near Akaroa. The first attempt at settling on the plains was made by James Herriot of Sydney. He arrived with two small groups of farmers in April 1840. Their first crop was successful, but a plague of ratsmade them decide to leave. In August 1840 Capt...
In November 1847 John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefieldmet to plan the Canterbury settlement. Wakefield believed that colonisation of countries like New Zealand could be organised in such a way that towns could be planned before settlers arrived. These towns would be like a community back in England, with landowners, small farmers and worke...
In December Captain Joseph Thomas, a surveyor, was sent to Canterbury to choose a site for the Canterbury settlement, and prepare for the first settlers. By the time that John Robert Godley, leader of the Canterbury settlement arrived with his family on the Lady Nugent on 12 April 1850, Captain Thomas had built a jetty, customs house and barracks a...
The Deans brothers at Riccarton and the Rhodes brothers at Purau supplied goods (vegetables, dairy produce and mutton). All heavy luggage had to be taken by small boat around to the Estuary and up the Avon to Christchurch. Other lighter luggage was carried over the Bridle Path. The first ‘selection days’ to ballot sections of land in the new towns ...
Within a year eight chartered Canterbury Association ships and another seven privately backed ships had arrived, bringing the population of the settlement to three thousand. Many new arrivals did not stay in town, but moved out onto the plains, where the land was good for sheep and cattle farming. Already Wakefield’s plan for a small farming commun...
Under the new provincial system, Canterbury’s first superintendent was James Edward Fitzgerald, elected on 20 July 1853. During the time he was superintendent, the sale of the back-country runs gave the Provincial Council a regular source of money. Canterbury prospered in these years, with wool exports steadily increasing the amount of money availa...
Because there were still big problems getting heavy luggage from Lyttelton to Christchurch, Fitzgerald tried to get the road to Sumner by way of Evans Pass completed. In 1854 the Provincial Council agreed to give money to complete the road. On 24 August 1857 Fitzgerald finally drove his dog-cart over the road to Lyttelton. It was still a difficult ...
Canterbury’s growing wealth and prosperity during the boom years of 1857-64 had a big effect on the city. More banks opened Christchurch branches (Bank of New South Wales in 1861, Bank of New Zealand in 1862, and the Bank of Australasia in 1864). New Zealand’s first telegraph opened in July 1863 between Christchurch and Lyttelton. The city’s newspa...
Mar 14, 2021 · The first stagecoaches began to run from Christchurch in 1640. Then in 1642 came the Civil War. At first, Christchurch was in the hands of the Royalists but in April 1644 a parliamentary army captured the town.
An introduction to World War 2, from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and the evacuation from Dunkirk in…. War between the so-called Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan on one side and Britain, the Commonwealth, France, the USA, the USSR, and China (the Allied powers) on the other. A truly world war, it was fought throughout Europe ...
1939. 3 June 1939. The Military Training Act, Britain's first peacetime draft, comes into force. All men aged 20–21 are now liable to call-up for four years military service as 'Militiamen'. 24 August 1939. Given the worsening situation in Europe, Parliament is recalled and immediately enacts the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939, granting ...
World War II Part of the anti-tank defence which ran the length of the railway line between the River Stour and the River Avon. During the Second World War Christchurch was again fortified against an expected invasion. The construction of pillboxes, gun emplacements and tank traps in and around the town, made Christchurch an 'anti-tank island'.
