Leyden Street in the suburb of Phillipstown, Christchurch

Leyden St in Phillipstown- Church Street Church Street first appears in street directories in 1892. Re-named Leyden Street in 1909. Another suggestion made at the time was re-naming the street Wesley Street.A small amount of information from the library website. I searched Papers Past, ancestry website and cemetery database and couldn’t find anyone with the surname of Leyden with a Christchurch connection so I have no idea where the name came from. The only place name that I could find was in the Netherlands but the name did seem to have a connection to the pilgrims who went on the Mayflower to America.The church on this street seems to have been here for a long time and the church hall was used by a lot of groups. At one stage it had a kindergarten hiring it as a school room. This didn’t stop other groups from using it for meetings. The hall had various names of church hall, social hall or Leyden St hall. In 1918 it was a sub depot for influenza cases and in November 1918 there was concern as cases had increased whereas elsewhere they were decreasing. In 1926 there was a suspicious fire at the Linwood Congregration Church School Room also known as Leyden St Hall. Luckily there was only slight damage. In 1922 they held the Sunday School Anniversary here but the article didn’t give details of years celebrated. In 1887 I found a couple of death notices for people who lived on Church St. Note there were thousands of entries for Church St as every suburb had a Church St so no wonder it got renamed.The renaming was interesting as the council wanted to rename the street Wesley St and as at least one member of the council gave the reason for the name was of there being a Methodist Church on the street. This did not go down well with the members of the church and there were letters to the editor and one person called themselves Ferry Roader. Several objections to renaming of the street were forwarded to the council led by Rev Sarginson. They had no objection to the names Leyden or Chalmers but as their church was a Congregational Church they were not prepared to accept the name Wesley.This street runs off Ferry Rd almost opposite Wilsons Rd. There are 23 properties here apart from the church. I couldn’t find the age of the the church buildings but suspect that they date from 1880s. There is one house dated from 1880s and it wasn’t the one that I expected. It is a neat wee house next to a very rough rundown house of a similar style. A few from 1915 and1920 and one from 1905 but there are several from 1990 and 2000. There was one house behind a really nice white wooden fence but the house itself looked shabby.