Eaton Place- The first sale of land adjoining Eaton Place was on 11 April 1874. The land belonged to Thomas Maberly Hassal (1834- 1879), a merchant. He and other residents of the street paid towards the formation of the street. In 1876 a petition signed by several ratepayers was received, asking that the street be taken over by the council with a special rate to be levied for forming and metalling it. Eaton Place had been “channelled, formed and shingled” by 1880. This is mentioned in the Star in a report of a council meeting held on 5 April 1880 The city council formally took over the street on 18 July 1881. First appears in street directories in 1883.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website for a small dead end street. Information from Papers Past has a mixture of houses and businesses on the street. At least two of the houses had names Tenby Cottage and Wimbledon Cottage. In 1897 there was a mention of Chapman’s Stables. In 1891 Mr S K Bassett purchased a large factory building covering the block of Manchester St and Eaton Place and Mortimer Place. In 1910 there was a fire at the store owned by NZ Express Co. In 1919 there were many ads for a furniture factory Williams Bros. When looking at nearby Allen St I kept seeing ads for Kaiapoi Woollen Mill and I thought that must have been a street with the same name in Kaiapoi but further reading I found out that Kaiapoi Woollen Mill have several factories and one was on Manchester St in the Allen St, Eaton Place and Mortimer Place area.
The street now leads to the loading area of Countdown supermarket. Lone Star is on the corner of Eaton Place and Manchester St.It is such a short street and I find it hard to imagine how all the old businesses managed to fit on the street. I imagine that the houses here were eventually pulled down to make way for the factories.
I still haven’t found out why the name Eaton as Thomas Hassal was born at Everton, Liverpool. He was a director of a company called Miles, Hassal and Co and they owned land all over the place. he was only 45 years old when he died of rheumatic fever on 06/10/1879. He was Imperial Germa Consul for Canterbury, director of Union Insurance company and very active in the church. His wife had a daughter 4 months after he died. He lived at The Oaks, Opawa. In Dec 1876 he wrote to the council enclosing a cheque for 45 pounds for forming the street. Amused by all the family trees on ancestry website who had him living in the Hawkes Bay at a place with similar spelling to Opawa. Mr S K Bassett was probably a property developer as he seemed to be always buying land. I suspect that the factory building he purchased in 1891 was leased to Kaiapoi Woollen Mill but couldn’t find the information.
Edited as I have come up with a theory for the name Eaton and is possibly a misspelling of the school Eton. There was an article on Papers Past about Bishop Harper which mentions him being vicar of Mortimer before coming to Christchurch. He also went to Eton the the article has two different spellings of school using Eton and Eaton. There is a nearby Mortimer Place.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 