Mountford Street in the suburb of Spreydon, Christchurch

Mountfort Street – Named after Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort (1825- 1898). Mountfort was an architect. Named in 1960.
A small amount of information from the library website. To say that Mountfort was an architect is an understatement.

Benjamin Mountfort would be one of our best architects. He was born in Birmingham and arrived in New Zealand on the Charlotte Jane. His first commission in New Zealand was the Most Holy Trinity Church in Lyttelton. This was a wooden building and was built in 1852 and demolished in 1857 as it was considered unsafe. I suspect that it was his inexperience with our local trees and our winds caused the problems with the building. He eventually became one of our most celebrated architects and introduced the gothic style to NZ. He is buried at Holy Trinity Avonside which was one of his designs but sadly this building didn’t survive the earthquakes.

Most of the houses are from the 1960s and are brick or concrete block. I didn’t take any photos. The street runs from Stourbridge St to Lyttelton St. Was a pleasant and tidy street but my feeling was that it was a boring street to be named after an interesting architect. I will now have to visit the cemetery to find his grave.