PEERSWICK – the forgotten past of Church Corner.

At Church Corner, at the western end of Riccarton Road, opposite Countdown are a series of shops and arcades.  Long past their prime and popularity, one arcade there especially doesn’t fit in and that would be the Peerswick Mall.  This very British sounding collection of shops is now the hub of Christchurch’s Asian shopping market, …

The Fire House Nightclub

As the sun set on the era of the Provincial Government, Christchurch – like most of the country’s main cities – must have felt a sudden vacuum as the Christchurch City Council settled itself into its new role.   Christchurch that we know today was in 1876, just a land mass with pockets of population, only …

George Hawkes Whitcombe (1854 – 1917)

George Hawkes Whitcombe (1854 – 1917)   Died of old age     Place of Death: Christchurch * Co-founder of Whitcombe and Tombs, now known to us as Whitcoulls. George is buried at Linwood Cemetery, Linwood, Christchurch. The story of Whitcoulls: http://www.peelingbackhistory.co.nz/whitcoulls-130-years/ Photo taken by Annette Bulovic

The (London) Times – a press, an editor, a reporter and a determined resolution

“At the head of the Pilgrims stood an actual bishop [Selwyn], behind him were working clergy, working schoolmasters, working landlords, working labourers, workers every one.  Between deck and keel were the elements of a college, the contents of a public library, the machinery for a bank, the constituent parts of a constitutional government.  It is …

BARRINGTON – Louisa Edith Simeon (1790 – 1832)

The story of the Simeon Family and that of Canterbury, New Zealand begins very much like the story of Canterbury itself. Sir John Simeon (pictured), like other lads from wealthy families, saw his teenage years in at Christ Church College in Oxford, as did his younger brothers, Charles and Cornwell.  It was there that he …