Christchurch

Christchurch is the centre of the third most populous urban area in NZ (after Auckland and Wellington) with about 310,000 people. It is situated on the Canterbury Plains, at the northern end of the Port Hills which separate the city from its major seaport, Lyttelton Harbour, 11 km away by rail and road tunnels. The city has the lowest annual rainfall of the four main centres (averaging 658 mm), the greatest range of temperature (from a mean winter daily minimum of 1°C in July to a summer daily maximum of 22°C), and a nor’-wester in summer that can create drought conditions and temperatures up to 32°C.

Soon after organised settlement in 1850 Christchurch began to prosper as the market town for the Canterbury Plains, the most immediately adaptable and most readily developed region for pastoral farming. Sheep farming flourished early on the country’s largest area of natural pasture, and as the settlers prospered they became strongly innovative. Today sheep farming, mixed farming and horticulture are still the basis of the city’s wealth, and dairying is growing with an expansion of irrigation systems. A strong secondary industry has developed with the emphasis on heavy engineering (which has a long tradition in the town) and chemical and rubber manufacturing.

Christchurch, at the confluence of the Avon and Heathcote Rivers, is known as the most English of NZ cities for historical reasons. The site was considered by the Free Church of Scotland group but they chose Dunedin on the advice of the surveyor, Frederick Tuckett, because some of the land was swampy, because access from Port Cooper (later Lyttelton Harbour) was difficult over the Port Hills, and because timber was less abundant than in other parts of the country.

The first Europeans to establish themselves in the region were William and John Deans, Scottish brothers, who had earlier immigrated to other NZ settlements — William to Wellington in 1840 and John to Nelson in 1842. In 1843 they settled at Riccarton (which they named after their home town near Kilmarnock in Scotland) with other immigrants, the Gebbies, Mansons, Hays and Sinclairs. They became successful and self-sufficient farmers, exporting dairy produce to Wellington and even Sydney.

The major settlement occurred in 1850 when the Canterbury Association, organised by John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, sent its first immigrants from England, on the Lady Nugent (arriving in April), and the Charlotte Jane, Randolph, Sir George Seymour and Cressy (all arriving in December). A surveyor, Captain Joseph Thomas, had chosen the site and, with surveyor Edward Jollie, had mapped streets and subdivisions from 1848 onwards. The settlement was basically an attempt to recreate an idealised English society, complete with an official ‘Anglican Church’. The idealisation faded quickly in the face of the hard reality of colonial life and the Canterbury Association was disbanded in 1855; but the Englishness remains, partly as a result of the city’s layout, with a Gothic-style stone Anglican cathedral (begun in 1864 and completed in 1901) dominating a central square.

Christchurch was named by Godley after his old university college at Oxford, Christ Church. Known as the ‘Garden City’, Christchurch fully justifies this description with an eighth of its area given over to public parks, reserves and recreation grounds. Hagley Park, 186 ha of parkland in the centre of the city, is the city’s most popular sports area, and the site of the Botanic Gardens (established in 1864).