Murray Place in the suburb of St Albans, Christchurch

Murray Place – Matson’s Avenue and Matson Avenue, Murray Street and Yarra Street were amalgamated to form Murray Place. Matson’s Avenue, later Matson Avenue, was named after John Thomas Matson (1845-1895). Murray Street was named after the Murray River in South Australia. Yarra Street was named after the Yarra River in South Australia. Matson died at Springfield in 1895. Matson’s Avenue first appears in street directories in 1898. Becomes Matson Avenue in 1900. Murray Street first appears in 1900; Yarra Street in 1903. The three were amalgamated in 1909 to form Murray Place. Formed on land owned by Robert Ewing McDougall (1861-1942), who was born in Australia.

A reasonable amount of information from the library website and I found the same information on Papers Past about the renaming of the street. A large amount of information on Papers Past about John Matson. He was an auctioneer in Christchurch for 28 years but was declared bankrupt in 1894. Sounds like he owned land and property in several places in the South Island but eventually couldn’t pay his loans. Looks like the only reason he kept his house in Christchurch because it was in his wife’s name. He died on 15/04/1895 aged 55 years old after a few months of ill health. Going by the wording of his obituary it sounds like he possibly had cancer. He was also well known for being the first person to import ostriches and llamas to Canterbury.

In the 1920s there were lots of events held at 68 Murray Place in the garden of Henry Forwood. They ranged from garden fetes to garden parties.
In the 1930s and 1940s there seemed to be a lot of babies born at 80 Murray Place at an establishment called Nurse Howson’s.
On Papers Past there is a photo of a house at 56 Murray Place provided by the builder with a note saying it was built for Mrs Keith Garrick. Mrs Garrick was John Matson’s daughter.
Going by the QV website there are a couple of houses built in 1905 and at least one in 1930 and a couple from 1960 and 1970.. The rest were from from 2000 onwards.

It was a lovely street and the modern houses weren’t too bad but there was one ugly house. I couldn’t see the older houses houses as they were on back sections. There was no longer a 56 Murray Place and couldn’t see a house that looked like the one from Papers Past.