Richmond Hill Rd – Named by George Humphreys (1848-1934) after he purchased the land where this road was formed from the estate of Mary Ann Rule (1875- 1909) in 1909. In 1960 the council decided that “Richmond Avenue, Richmond Hill, Richmond Hill Road and Richmond Hill Avenue should become Richmond Hill Road, the official name of the Sumner Road”.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website but it doesn’t say why he named it Richmond Hill. A very steep hill and it starts on the flat down in Sumner where the bowling club is. The road splits here and there are houses in a valley. The houses looked nice but I would hate to live here as you get very little sun, The footpath was narrow and in very poor condition and I frequently had to go onto the road as the lamp posts took up most of the footpath. Wasn’t helped by cars parked on the footpath. There was one section that had no footpath which was dangerous as when walking back down I met lots of school children walking up the road. Mostly new houses on this road and they will be rebuilds as the originals would have been destroyed in the earthquakes. As you got near the top of the hill it was all new houses as the road had obviously been extended and new subdivisions created. Many ugly wooden houses especially the higher you got. I don’t know the name of the building material for the others but the houses are white. There was one Spanish looking house with orange tiled roof. Lots of windows because of the views. There was one huge house that I would loved to have got photos of as it was so grand but the owners were outside. Several security gates here. At least one house had a swimming pool and others possibly did as well. Some interesting letterboxes on the lower part of the road where the houses weren’t so grand. It was hard work walking here as the hill was steep and not having a decent footpath didn’t help.
I have now looked up Richmond Hill in my Gordon Ogilvie book and he has that it was named after a song called Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill by Irish Poet Leonard MacNally and the song is about Leonard’s wife.
There was also a schooner called Richmond that sailed in NZ waters.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 