Mowbray Street in the suburb of Waltham, Christchurch

Mowbray St in Waltham- Probably named after Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, England. Named in 1897 by Harman and Stevens, land and commission agents.A small amount of information from the library website. I found the same information about Harman and Stevens in Papers Past. There were several ads in 1897 for the sale of sections. In 1904 there was a request from residents for street lights. In 1913 there was a letter to the editor about Mowbray St being a neglected street and complaints about the street being a mess because the council kept digging it up to lay pipes and not repairing it properly afterwards. Some things don’t change. There were many birth and death notices for the street but there are no longer houses on this street. The railway line and sheds are on one side of the street and businesses on the other side. There is an entrance to a tunnel that goes under the railway lines here and if it hadn’t been starting to get dark the evening that I walked this street I would have explored the tunnel. I vaguely recall this tunnel from when I was young and I am also fairly sure that there was a geocache somewhere in the tunnel many years ago.There are a couple of possible reasons for the street name and obviously being named after Melton Mowbray is one of them. Harman was born in Dublin so he is unlikely to have a connection to Melton Mowbray. Edward Stevens possibly has a connection through his wife but this depends if she was born in Longborough in Gloucestershire or born in Loughborough near Melton Mowbray. There were at least two or three families in New Zealand with the surname Mowbray in New Zealand but they don’t seem to have lived in Christchurch in the 1890s.