Thackeray Place and Thackeray Street in the suburb of Waltham, Christchurch

Thackeray Place and Thackeray Street – formerly Thackeray Street Named after William Makepeace Thackeray (1811- 1863). Thackeray was a novelist and essayist. One of the “poets and writers” streets of Sydenham, Addington and Waltham named by a committee of the Sydenham Borough Council on 19 January 1880. Developed on land owned by Harman and Stevens, land and commission agents. They asked the Sydenham Borough Council to complete its formation in 1894. Thackeray Street first appears in street directories in 1887. Becomes Thackeray Place in 1983.A reasonable amount of information from the library website but their website doesn’t mention Thackeray St as there still is a Thackeray St. The naming is pretty obvious so I don’t need to cover that.In 1884 the council mentioned streets lamps to be installed for this street. In 1893 someone was fined for allowing his cow to wander on the street and in 1895 there was a letter to the editor complaining about the state of the street. It was about the abnormal growth of weeds on the street and is the street for public grazing purposes and do they need a councillor living on the street for things to be fixed. The street was slightly about which suburb it was in as both Sydenham and Phillipstown were used but mostly Waltham was used. In1906 there were several birth notices that mentioned Kia Ora Nursing Home.There was one sad article from 1886 where a William Hosking died at his residence in Thackeray St after being injured by a fall of earth while working on fortifications on Ripa Island.There are a few houses dating from 1910 through to 1940 and they are mostly really lovely but two of them are in a bad state of repair. The ones dated from 2000 onwards are horrible and look like state housing but are probably just apartments crammed together on sections that originally would have had just one house.Thackeray Place runs from Shakespeare Rd to Brougham St and there is a wee reserve called Thackeray Reserve at the Brougham St end. If you cross Shakespeare Rd you come to Thackeray St which runs to Mowbray St. This section is full of businesses and there are no houses here. There is also a wee kink in the streets so that Thackeray Place doesn’t join up direct with Thackeray St.