Welles Street in the Central City, Christchurch

Welles Street – Marton Street and Belfast Street. Re-named Welles Street. Named because of the well once there. Martin Street (note spelling) appears on an 1879 map. The Marton Street well is referred to in the Star in 1895. Marton Street first appears in street directories in 1900. Re-named Belfast Street in 1911. Re-named Welles Street on 1 September 1948 when 120 streets were renamed. It was given an additional “e”

A small amount of information from the library website. Papers Past doesn’t have The Press after 1945 so I can’t check the name changes in 1948. I am going to have to visit the library to see if I can read The Press from 1948. It is quite likely that the street did get renamed after the well but an American diplomat Sumner Welles was big in the news in 1948.

Information from Papers Past has cottages for sale in 1872 and 1877. Land was for sale in 1889 and in 1880 there was a corner section sold for 1450 pounds which included three shops which were leased for 11 years at 70 pounds yearly. It is possible that this is the same corner site that sold in 1906 and by this time it had a shop and bakehouse along with 6 cottages. Sounded like the seller was desperate to sell.
In the early 1900s there was an electrical engineer and contractor A E Brown on the street. Lots of job ads for the company Nugget Polish Coy of NZ.
In 1877 the council received a letter from the agents for A R Creyke requesting that the street be taken over as a public street.
In August 1911 the council received a petition with 17 signatures on it requesting that the street name be changed owing to the notoriety gained by the street because of bad characters living in the street. They suggested the name be changed to Cheshire St. I couldn’t find anything about the Cheshire name being rejected and Belfast St being accepted.I would assume that the name was changed from Belfast St to Welles St because of Belfast Rd in Belfast.
I couldn’t find any particular stories about bad characters but a few court cases re obscene language. In 1911 there was a big story about sly grog being sold and the petition was in 1911 so it is a possible reason. Didn’t find anything about houses of ill fame which surprised me as every other street in the area had at least one such house.
The well was mentioned in 1895 as was all the other wells in the city. The wells were decreasing in supply and it was taking lnger to fill the street water carts.

Some great street art along here along with several restaurants. There are apartments here called The Welder and I would like to know where this name comes from as I vaguely recall visiting a business called Tricky Weld in this area. Recall the business being on a corner of a main road and a side road.The street goes from Manchester St to Colombo St.

I have found the most likely reason for the original name of Marton St. Alfred Richard Creyke owned a large amount of land in this area. He was only in NZ for 10 to 15 years. His father was bishop in Yorkshire and was probably related to the Creyke family of Marton in Yorkshire.