Aylesford Street in the suburb of Mairehau, Christchurch

Aylesford St in Mairehau – Part of Shirley Road (from Hills Road to Westminster Street).Named after Aylesford, a village and civil parish on the River Medway in Kent, England A section of Shirley Road was re-named Aylesford Street on 1 September 1948 when 120 streets were renamed. A small amount of information from the library website. I couldn’t find out much more information as trying to figure out which part of Shirley Rd became Aylesford St was a bit difficult. Aylesford St went off at such an angle from Shirley Rd that it was difficult to think that it was part of Shirley Rd. Found a map from 1929 and it made much more sense. The corner of Hills Rd, Warrington St and Shirley has been straightened out since the earlier days. Dudley Creek runs through this intersection but these days it is underground but in the map of 1929 there is a bridge on this corner. The bridge is mentioned in Papers Past. The same map from 1929 shows houses on only one side of the street numbered from 1 to 103. On the other side there is 4 bigger sections of rural land. I was geocaching along this street on Saturday morning. The oldest house is dated from 1890 and there are a few from 1910 plus a large number from 1920s. The other decades have a few houses especially the 1940s. A few modern houses plus many from 1970s. The older houses are all on the one side of the road. The houses from 1950s onwards are all on the side that used to be rural land. Mostly wooden houses apart from some of the newer ones. There were some lovely houses here and I quite liked this street. The house that I found most interesting was from 1970s and it wasn’t either beautiful or ugly. I couldn’t get a decent view but it had an unusual turret.