Hawford Rd – Named after Hawford, the home there of Dr John Shearing Willis (1807- 1869). Willis emigrated as surgeon-superintendent on the Isabella Hercus in 1851 and took up Rural Section 38, 100 acres on the “River Heathcote, near Christchurch Quay”. He built a house in 1860 which he named Hawford. In 1882 his son, Charles Frederick Tracy Willis (1855?- 1902), sold off part of the land known by then as the Village of Hawford. Charles Willis was living there in 1885 when a child was born to him and his wife. It was later the home of John Flinders Scott (1876-1941). Hawford Road first appears in the Star in 1881 in a report of a meeting of the Road Board. First appears in street directories in 1892. [The plan for a single line of houses along the river frontage was approved by the City Council in 1951.]
A reasonable amount of information from the library website. Found an article on Papers Past dated May 1879 calling for tenders for forming Hawford Rd. Several ads for sale of sections in 1882. It is highly likely that Hawford in Worcestershire is where Dr John Willis family came from. Ancestry website various family trees didn’t have precise place for the family. Note nearby street Ombersley Tce is possibly named after a place called Ombersley which is only a few miles from Hawford. Hawford is also not far from Beckford in the UK.
Many lovely older wooden houses here plus more modern houses. QV website had houses built from 1920 to 2018 but there was one one where the date was unknown. I have never seen this on QV website before.
A pleasant street and there are shops at the Opawa St end of the street. The most modern houses were the apartments at the Chatswood Rest Home. The main building looked like an older wooden villa but the QV website didn’t have any information for the property.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 