Southwark Street in the Central City, Christchurch

Southwark Street – Formerly George Street. Named after George Allen (1805- 1871). Re-named Southwark Street. Named after the bishopric of Southwark. Allen was a market gardener, carrier and proprietor of the New Zealander Hotel. He left £20 in his will to the City Council to form George Street. The balance was to be paid on completion of the work. George Street appears on an 1879 map and in street directories in 1883. Re-named Southwark Street in 1909. The street is associated with neighbouring Allen Street which is also named after George Allen.

A reasonable amount of information from the website and on Papers Past found council report about petition from Freeholders, ratepayers and tenants requesting a change of name. No reason given for why they wanted the name change.
When it was George St there were lots of information about births and deaths on the street on Papers Past.
It sounds like the street eventually got very rundown. In 1917 there was an order for three houses to be demolished because they were unfit for occupation. There was also an order in 1911 for destruction of insanitary buildings. Interesting article stating that Southwark St always had an evil reputation for it’s housing conditions. Rent for this street was 14 to 16 schillings a week. Houses had no baths or water. The same inspectors inspected Allen St and they said that it wasn’t so depressing and had a more pleasing appearance. Rent here was 25 schillings a week.

This is another street with a couple of houses of ill fame. There were a lot of these types of houses in this area.There were also lots of reports about gaming houses and further reading makes you realise that only a certain group were targeted. They were described as profaning the Christian Sabbath. There was a good description of a raid where the police arrested 50 Chinese men for playing a game called fan tan. Apparently Sunday was a good day for the raid as it was an unsuitable day for clandestine gardening. Apparently the Chinese were forbidden to weed their gardens or tend their cabbages on the Sabbath. There was also an incident in 1914 where the person in court was described as lemon tinted.
From the 1920s most of the houses had gone and there were factories here.

This street runs from Madras St to Manchester St and there is new buildings called Southwark Apartments but also empty sections used for car parking. The street didn’t really appeal to me but did manage to get photos of street art.