Angus Street in the suburb of Sydenham, Christchurch

Angus Street – Named after John Craib Angus. St Andrew’s Presbyterian marriage records have Angus, a saddler, marrying Janet Murison in 1859 at the home of John Anderson, Cashel Street. Angus was a member of the first Christchurch City Council in 1868. He later absconded overseas, probably to Australia, to escape his creditors. An election was held in 1869 to fill the vacancy on the Christchurch City Council caused by his departure. The formation of this street was discussed at a meeting of the Sydenham Borough Council in 1878 when Thomas Russell, a carpenter and resident, applied for it to be formed. This was agreed to “provided the street be dedicated and the cost of formation prepaid”. First appears in street directories in 1887.

Really interesting information from the library website for a small street in Sydenham. Found the same information from 1878 on Papers Past. From 1879 to 1881 there were lots of ads for the sale of cottages. Many of these ads mentioned being close to Agricultural Show Grounds.In the late 1860s there is a few articles about John Angus being bankrupt so I am surprised that they named a street after him. There was an article dated 1912 about a malthouse being destroyed by fire.

I tried to find more information about John Angus on an Ancestry website but he seemed to have disappeared. It wasn’t helped by him having a son with the same name. He was born in Scotland and was possibly in Melbourne in 1872. Creditors were having problems trying to find him. The family trees I found had him dying in two different years. Some had him dying in 1874 and others had him dying in 1903 but none had proof and I couldn’t find any confirmation for either date. Craib was probably his mother’s maiden name. His wife possibly died in 1916 under the name Jane Angus and is buried at Linwood. Again the family trees had no proof that this Jane Angus is the same person.

This street at the Colombo St end had businesses and the street leads to Bradford Park. A mixture of new apartment style houses especially down Bradford Park end. Still many old cottages here dating from early 1900s. There was a group of flats that looked like social housing but they didn’t come up on QV website or have street numbers. I spent ages online with this street as the details were so interesting.